Tomorrow the team will be leaving Louisville to fly to Omaha to begin preparations for their first baseball national championship.
Louisville's 4 team bracket/pod is as open as it can be. If there are any differences between the 4 schools it is a minimal difference. It's really about execution this late in the tournament. I think Louisville/Oregon St. are the two teams that have the best shot to advance to the finals. Miss St. and IU are very good clubs but I don't know if they have all of the pitching in place to win this many games.
TD Ameritrade is built for pitching and defense. Less than 20 HR's have been hit in the new park during the CWS. Louisville is tops in the country in pretty much every pitching category. The defense did make 3 errors in Nashville and still won but errors will need to be minimized this week or it could cost them their season.
Lineup. With Cole moving to the 2 hole, with Rat day-to-day, the 6 hole hitter becomes very important. It will be interesting to see who hits there as teams may look to pitch around Gardner a little bit. The 6-9 hitters did do well in Nashville but we really need Engel and Young to get it going this week and the 6-9 just give us good AB's.
IU will be a tough matchup. They swing it better than anyone. About 70% of their hits are singles while Louisville hits about 74% singles. Louisville did not have an extra base hit in Nashville (credit Vandy pitching). Denato is a tough LHP for IU with a good mix of pitches but he did get hit around at FSU. What killed FSU was that they didn't pitch well. IU's defense has been below average lately as well as the pitching. Some of their guys looked nervous in Tally. You wonder how much that carries over to Omaha. Saturday's game is sold out and IU is making their first trip to Omaha.
Louisville's 4 team bracket/pod is as open as it can be. If there are any differences between the 4 schools it is a minimal difference. It's really about execution this late in the tournament. I think Louisville/Oregon St. are the two teams that have the best shot to advance to the finals. Miss St. and IU are very good clubs but I don't know if they have all of the pitching in place to win this many games.
TD Ameritrade is built for pitching and defense. Less than 20 HR's have been hit in the new park during the CWS. Louisville is tops in the country in pretty much every pitching category. The defense did make 3 errors in Nashville and still won but errors will need to be minimized this week or it could cost them their season.
Lineup. With Cole moving to the 2 hole, with Rat day-to-day, the 6 hole hitter becomes very important. It will be interesting to see who hits there as teams may look to pitch around Gardner a little bit. The 6-9 hitters did do well in Nashville but we really need Engel and Young to get it going this week and the 6-9 just give us good AB's.
IU will be a tough matchup. They swing it better than anyone. About 70% of their hits are singles while Louisville hits about 74% singles. Louisville did not have an extra base hit in Nashville (credit Vandy pitching). Denato is a tough LHP for IU with a good mix of pitches but he did get hit around at FSU. What killed FSU was that they didn't pitch well. IU's defense has been below average lately as well as the pitching. Some of their guys looked nervous in Tally. You wonder how much that carries over to Omaha. Saturday's game is sold out and IU is making their first trip to Omaha.
