The Road to Omaha: NCAA Baseball Tournament Thread

Actually it's three C-USA teams -- USM, East Carolina and Rice. Plus two former members in TCU and the 'Ville. COOOOSA hasn't had anybody knocked out yet.

And the Corky Palmer Story, starring Clint Howard, as we discovered earlier in the thread, is a cool thing.

 

I just love that Corky's getting all this love from SportsJournalists.com.

Man has a really split personality. On the baseball field, he's all business to the point of being gruff. Get him away from the ball park, and he'll talk your ass off about anything and everything. He comes around to the press box for USM football games and he is an absolute hoot.

 

UNC-ECU was sold out with no public sale of tickets. Pretty impressive.

 

Only three regionals were played in the West this year (as usual) and it's almost a given that if you host, you advance. CSUF and ASU did, and Irvine somehow got stuck in the regional of death, which was probably the toughest regional of all, and got knocked off by a Virginia team that underachieved for much of the season but seems to be peaking right now.

What is unusual is that none of the western teams sent out-of-region won their regional. But the Pac-10 was down somewhat this season; Oregon State and Wazzu got sent to very tough regionals and OSU advanced to the championship game by twice knocking off the preseason No. 1 (A&M) in its home state.

Gonzaga and Utah were lumped in with the Titans so two western teams were eliminated right there; Irvine eliminated SDSU and ASU took care of Cal Poly.

 

Some of the usual suspects didn't even make it this year -- Long Beach State, Stanford (a perennial regional host) and University of San Diego (which swept its two games with UC Irvine, including USD's final game of the year when the Anteaters were No. 1 nationally) -- and heck, even Fresno State would have missed the regionals if not for winning a slew of elimination games to pull out the WAC title and the automatic berth.

As long as Fullerton's got a chance, though, I'm a happy Titan alumnus.

 

Stanford's program is nowhere near where it used to be. It's been .500 or below in the Pac-10 in four of the past five seasons and last year's CWS appearance was somewhat of a fluke.

There's a reason the old Six-Pack coaches fought reunification so much. Now they have to go on the road to play the Pac-10's Northern schools in late March, April and May, instead of getting them at home in February when the Northern schools hadn't even been outside yet.

Now the old Northern Division is a much tougher out. An old Six-Pack school has finished eighth or ninth in the Pac-10 every year since 2002 and Stanford and USC were 8-9 in 2007.

 

I stand corrected. The ACC and SEC having this many teams go this far is no surprise. COOOOOOOOO-sa filling up the bracket is.

I've got all the respect in the world for the Cavaliers. They shocked a pretty good baseball team, FSU, for the league title. They faced Strasburg and hit him like he's never been hit before and won the toughest regional in the board. That's a nice resume.

 

TCU
LSU
North Carolina
CS-Fullerton
Florida
Virginia
Florida State
Arizona State

 

I think the Louisville-Fullerton series has potential to be a very good series. Louisville struggled early but really played well late in the Big East season, and they have the starting pitching and the hitting to cause problems. The middle of the order is tough, and their number one starter is capable of beating anyone.

I still think Fullerton pulls it out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Louisville win it. That's a program that has done more than expected a couple times under Dan McDonnell, including its trip to Omaha two years ago.

 

And I hope Chapel Hill flattens EC.

 

Bring it!

 

Least surprising post in SportsJournalists.com history.