NCAA Division 1 Championship

so 1st day of CWS

Vandy over UNC.
Fla. over Texas

 

new park dimensions

the new ball park at Omaha appears to have dimensions with spacious open areas in the LC & RC gaps; should be lots of doubles, triples.
challange for outfielders to cover adequately.

 

Heels Stay Alive!

Emanuel: 4-hit shutout

Heels win 3-0.

 

Gamecocks lookin' good

I'm pullin' for USC and they defeated # 1 seed UVa. 7-1 to go to 2-0 in the CWS.
maybe a repeat champ?

Fla. also 2-0.

 

So far----

SEC kicking the ACC's butt!

 

Vandy over UNC again

Vanderbilt is a very good team. Nice pitching performance by their # 3 guy.

Yes the SEC looks strong as you would expect.

USC-UNC would have been fun for the championship, but was not meant to be I suppose.

 

Ditto!

 

Vandy's catcher framed better?

Curious to get a catcher coach or an umpire's opinion on this.

Although UNC's catcher hit really well. On my DVR version of the game, it seemed like Vandy's catcher got more strikes for his pitcher. More low strikes for sure. And corners. I saw Forbes and Fox looking really pissed off. And the umpire conversing with Forbes during a mound visit. Fox telling his assistant to "be quiet".

Sometimes it's not bias or conspiracy, but simply technique.

It looked like the Vandy catcher's stance was lower, and his body was more "quiet" (he moved less after the pitch was on it's way). Stallings for UNC looked "less quiet", like he tried to move the center of his chest in front of his glove. Consequently he didn't get that corner strike. It has to look to the umpire like he's moving to go get the ball. Rather than receiving it. I wasn't pulling or either team, but UNC looked to not get the low or corner pitch early. Eventually you get behind and get hit hard. Maybe the Vandy pitcher was a tall sinker pitcher. And that was it, But i thought it was catching/framing that made the difference. Does that make sense. This in no way takes away from Stallings awesome job hitting, or his effort, or hustle.

S.Carolina's catcher looked truely awesome on framing technique. The LHP wasn't bad either.

 

CWS coverage

Big fan here of college baseball. TV coverage of the game has increased greatly over last few years and that has helped the game from a fan's perspective.

As far as coverage of the CWS, I think it's gotten a bit stale. Basically 2 former players , Robin Ventura and Orel Hersheiser with announcers. As side bars they talk about those 2 former players' careers, this and that. Tired.
Seems there's so much that could be spiced up to make it more appealing, such as history of the CWS, outstanding games / plays from the past, feature spots on current / past players from the CWS, unsung heroes, interviews with former players, coaches, etc. Use some imagination to create more interest.

So now down to 3 SEC and 1 ACC team. Probably the top 4 teams in the nation are remaining.

 

Virginia vs. the SEC