Regional: Ga Tech, UNCW, UGa, Army

FredJacket

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LET'S GO!!!

Notes from the interview (embedded in article)

-Green is 'good to go'
-Yunger is expected to be 'fine' to play by Friday
-Ben King very frank/honest about the pitching woes since UVA series
-Coach Hall points out how rigorous the schedule was to end the season. 8 games in 12 days (I counted 13). Late travel from Tallahassee. Quick turn travel to Charlotte with games back-to-back days at 3pm/11am. Sounded like an 'excuse' until he clarified it wasn't an excuse. :)

What do y'all think about who crowd support will play out. Obviously, UGA will have the home-field advantage. Not talking about that. How will it look v UNCW?

GO ARMY!!!

 

78pike

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My guess on the crowd will be that a number of UGA fans become UNCW fans around 7:00 on Friday and will make for a decent crowd in the stands. Personally, I like it if it turns out that way. I think a scenario like that will fire up our guys.
 

gtbeak

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I hate to admit this, but I like UGa's baseball radio crew (Jeff Dantzler & David Johnston). They are unabashed homers, but they aren't disrespectful to the opponent, including "Tech" (they consciously never say GEORGIA Tech or Yellow Jackets). They are quite humorous, especially in games where the outcome is decided. And they also have a ton of professional respect for Wiley Ballard, I have heard them say this on-air.

Anyhow, I say all that to mention that I was listening to David Johnston's drive-time call-in show this AM on the Athens radio station for my 1 hour drive to work. They were mostly doing sports trivia or the Braves, but they did spend about 5 or 10 minutes talking about the regionals. They aren't thrilled about "Tech" getting sent there way. They mentioned that game 1 was theirs, but they talked about how the other two games were quite close. They stated that hopefully UNC-W takes care of their end so that UGa doesn't have to play Tech, cause they saw how excited our players were to be coming to Athens on the ESPN2 broadcast. They did close with WTTE of...If we do have to play them we'll just have to send them home.....but it was clear they aren't looking forward to the possibility.
 

TooTall

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I won't know until Friday if I will make it for Saturday and will grab a general admission ticket or 2 if I can. Who else is looking at going?
 

bensaysitathome

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Some raw comparative data from Twitter, for those interested. The interesting column to me is "tournament rank." At first glance it doesn't seem as bad as many are afraid.
 

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gtbeak

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Ha, yes. But the mutts are our greatest challenge, and aren't great either. Mostly, this brings our opponent's holes to light. Very few perfect teams.

But those GT offensive numbers are good, too.
Who woulda thunk that the Jackets pitching staff would have the lowest walk rate of any staffs in this regional?
 

GTNavyNuke

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Yeah, 62 out of 64 in ERA is not so bad. I would have guessed we were 64 out of 64.

Good pitching beats good hitting. What's your problem? (tic)

I think it would be so ironic if this year we make the CWS since we have no sound rationale to be there. But it's baseball. We can hit and play defense and the guys want it (as do all teams).
 

GT33

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What I thought was interesting was our 24th nationally SOS. There was an immense amount of chatter regarding our weak schedule and how it was going to screw us but the numbers paint a different picture altogther.
 

FredJacket

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What I thought was interesting was our 24th nationally SOS. There was an immense amount of chatter regarding our weak schedule and how it was going to screw us but the numbers paint a different picture altogther.
We had a tough schedule overall. Our conference schedule (especially when factoring the road series) was key to that. As it turned out (ironically)... the strong SoS factored into the bid... not even a bubble team as far as the committee was concerned. The chatter was focused on the OOC schedule. Perhaps the coaching staff actually knew what they were doing with the schedule. :)

For record.... I want Ga Tech to play tough competition every single game. But I just want to see good teams play. My desired schedule would have resulted in a bunch of quality opponents... more losses... and plans this weekend to be doing something other than watching my team in a regional because they would not have made it. :)
 

gtbeak

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What I thought was interesting was our 24th nationally SOS. There was an immense amount of chatter regarding our weak schedule and how it was going to screw us but the numbers paint a different picture altogther.
Yeah, I also noted that, at the end of the day, our overall SoS was really good. It was raising (IOW, the number getting lower) by about 5 spots with every game we played there at the end of the season. As one of the national guys pointed out (I think it was Fitt), we played ONLY top 50 RPI teams in the month of May, and ONLY top 100 schools after March 19th save for the one mid-week game versus Presbyterian. As I wrote a week or so back, we play possibly the toughest mid-week schedule of any school in the country, at least I couldn't find any teams that play a tougher one than us. Still, as Fred pointed out, our non-conference SoS was only 202, and in past years the committee has used that as a reason to exclude teams, most recently Kansas St last year. It further fits my idea that I truly believe, which is that the committee in all three sports I follow (baseball, basketball, and football) makes their choices based primarily on the eye test and then finds data points to support their eye test, with little regard for consistency.
 
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gtbeak

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We had a tough schedule overall. Our conference schedule (especially when factoring the road series) was key to that. As it turned out (ironically)... the strong SoS factored into the bid... not even a bubble team as far as the committee was concerned. The chatter was focused on the OOC schedule. Perhaps the coaching staff actually knew what they were doing with the schedule. :)

For record.... I want Ga Tech to play tough competition every single game. But I just want to see good teams play. My desired schedule would have resulted in a bunch of quality opponents... more losses... and plans this weekend to be doing something other than watching my team in a regional because they would not have made it. :)
Perhaps the coaching staff actually knew what they were doing with the schedule. :) - Yes, I'm guilty of sometimes acting like, and maybe even believing, that I know more than the guys like Coach Hall who do this for a living. This is another humbling example of "I was wrong, they were right".
 

FredJacket

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D1 Baseball crew discusses (quickly) each regional. If you only care about the Athens regional. Go to 46:40.

They really say very little (it's quick); but a few nuggets about the teams represented. UNCW gets the most 'air time'.

 
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