Hopefully, the Davidson losses served as a wake up call. We've had a couple of winnings streaks this year, so of course we can do it again! Question is...will we?

Go Spartans.

Tournament update:

- #7 Western Carolina beats #10 Davidson in extra innings. Davidson is eliminated and WCU moves on into the mini bracket to play CoC today.
- #9 Wofford beats #8 Citadel. The Citadel is eliminated and Wofford moves into the other mini bracket to play Elon today.

UNCG's game against Ga Southern will be played as the last game of the day (~8:00) due to Citadel losing. The SoCon still does that wacky thing of making sure that the home schools play in primetime, regardless of their seeding.

Weds Recap
- #2 CoC over #7 WCU - Tice hits 2 homeruns to raise his season total to ~190 and CoC got good pitching.
- #3 Furman over #6 App State (extra innings) - App State took a 2-run lead in the top of the 10th and then decided that they'd walk a few before giving up a walk-off HR.
- #1 Elon over #9 Wofford - Final Score 21-12. I think this game took 7 hours to play.
- #4 Ga Southern over #5 UNCG - game didn't start until 10:20 pm. I heard it didn't get over with until 2:10. Final score 21-9. UNCG got down 6-0 right off the bat, then battled back to take a 8-7 lead in the 6th. The Spartans promptly gave up 14 runs in the last 3 innings. UNCG hit the ball well, but couldn't help but to walk people and get behind in almost all of the counts. Ga Southern just has UNCG's number it seems, as they've scored doublt-digit runs in all 4 games this year.

Coming up today
Elimination Games
#6 App State vs #7 WCU - As I'm writing this ASU is already leading 8-1 in the 4th.
#5 UNCG vs #9 Wofford - If UNCG can get some pitching help and play with some focus - something that was lacking last night - they can stem off elimination for another day. I'm sure the guys didn't get to bed last night until 3 AM and then have to come back and play today at 1 PM. So, I hope they can bring some fire to the park and play with the feeling that they're supposed to be there.
Winner's Bracket Games
#2 CoC vs #3 Furman - This could be best game of the tourney. Big offensive vs Good pitching.
#1 Elon vs #4 Ga Southern - I'm guessing the score of this one will either be 32-31 or 1-0 (b/c they ran around so much yesterday, they'll be tired).

BTW, Sportsouth is showing the ACC tournament this week. If you get some time, check it out. 6 of the 8 teams playing are in the top 30.

Something else I meant to note in my last post was that I was able to listen to all of the SoCon tournament games on the internet through various schools websites. I listened to the UNCG game on the Ga. Southern radio network. The play-by-play guys made a note that only 3 SoCon schools didn't have radio teams at the game and one of them was UNCG. The guys were shocked b/c UNCG always has a solid baseball program (the other 2 were Wofford and I think Davidson).

This just goes back to one of my personal "beefs" with UNCG and their sports marketing department. Nobody at the school seems to give a darn about radio feeds or networks. Kind of dissapointing that I live less than 30 miles away from the school and I can't hear any basketball games on the radio. Plus, there's not even crew that does baseball games.

UNCG crushes Wofford 14-5. Rob Gilliam pitched a great game for the Spartans, giving up 3 run on 6 hits in 7 innings. He did a really solid job of not walking batters, and the Spartan bats really came alive.

If not for the play of the Wofford Shortstop (Gilmartin) this game would have been even more lopsided than it was. I think that guy will be a tremendous player in the fututre.

All of the games are being carried on www.goasu.com

It's pretty fun for me to be at work and have the audio of the games playing in the background.

Go Spartans !!!

Since I've been at the beach over the weekend, I haven't had the chance to recap what all took place the last few days at the SoCon tournament.

On Friday, UNCG got a rematch with Georgia Southern (who dropped their Thursday game with Elon). This time, the Spartans beat the Eagles 12-9 and sent them home. Greg Feltes hit his second grand slam in as many days. Plus, UNCG got another solid pitching performance.

Saturday, though, UNCG ran into a buzzsaw with Elon. I thought going into this thing that they were the best team, and that was right. The Spartans didn't really hit the ball and didn't get much from the mound. So, that's it for the season.

Elon gets the #3 seed in UNC-CH's regional. Having already beat Carolina once this year, they may have a chance to play well there this coming weekend.

However, CoC got hosed. With a top-50 RPI, 39 wins and a second place finish in the 8th best conference, CoC got no at-large bid. They deserved the bid and the SoCon deserved not to be a one-bid league.

Meanwhile the 3rd best conference (SEC) gets 9 bids. All 8 of the teams that made their conference tournament got a bid, plus one team that didn't make the conference tourney. Wonder who was on the committee?

Quote:

Division I selection committee chairman Larry Templeton ... Templeton, also the athletic director at Mississippi State.

http://proxy.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3412908

And then there's this ...

Quote:

... even if you don’t believe Oregon State’s overall record or RPI is strong enough, College of Charleston has a better case for inclusion than Oklahoma. As Cougars coach John Pawlowski points out, his team went 18-13 against teams in the top 100 of the RPI, while Oklahoma went 18-20. Last year, when CofC won 39 games and was omitted from the field of 64, Templeton pointed to the Cougars’ weak finish as reason for their exclusion after they went 0-2 in the Southern Conference tournament. But this year, Charleston went 7-3 down the stretch and reached the championship game of the SoCon tournament. This time around, Templeton said CofC just didn’t have enough wins against teams in the top 75 of the RPI.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/college/?p=428

I figured I would go ahead and put up one final post for the 2008 baseball season. UNCG was picked to finish 7th in the SoCon by both the writers and coaches at the start of the year. So, this team did overachieve some. The guys finished 33-27 (15-12 5th place) and made it to the tournament semifinals.

The hitting this year was outstanding. Feltes, Orton, Gaski, Carrier and Snell all hit the ball well for most of the year. The problem this season was the erratic pitching. This team is loaded with young pitchers, and it definitely seemed like Gaski never knew how the guys were going to throw from game to game.

As for 2009, The Spartans are losing basically their whole starting lineup. Leon, Quinones, Overholtzer, and Gehringer (part time) are the only starters back for next season. However, the whole pitching staff - minus McCall - will be back. I think that this pitching staff should be very solid for the next few seasons.

So, that's it ... I'll post tomorrow if any of the Spartans are picked in the draft.

So our lineup will be young next year but we'll have a veteran staff. Then, in 2 years, we'll have a veteran lineup with a young staff again....

Anyway, good year for the Spartans. Thanks, Dash, for the updates.

I think the Spartans could be better off with a veteran pitching staff and a younger lineup in the field. A majority of the pitchers are not only young - they're freshmen. So, there are several years ahead of them to develop. Plus, good pitching can keep you in a game until a timely hit comes around. As we saw this year, UNCG scored a ton of runs. But their pitchers struggled to hold onto the leads. Maybe they will do better next year being in the opposite situation.

And who knows, maybe they can do both at some time ...

Anyways, Splinter I 'preciate the compliment, and for keeping up with my ramblings.

No Spartans were drafted on the first day of the MLB draft (202 picks).

2 SoCon players were taken:

# 132 Steven Hensley (Elon)
# 201 Jeremy Tice (CofC)

2 Spartans were drafted on day 2 of the MLB draft.

Ricky Orton in the 29th round by the Marlins (pick #868) and Matt Gaski in the 34th round by the Padres (pick #1035).

Orton could be back playing in G'boro soon with the Grasshoppers since they're affiliated with the Marlins.

A quick update on the UNCG players that were drafted this year ...

Ricky Orton is playing in the Rookie Gulf Coast League with the Marlins. Through 7 games he's batting .286 with 3 RBI's. He'slisted as playing 3rd base.

Matt Gaski is playing in the Rookie Arizona League with the Padres. He's batting .188 with 3 RBI's through 5 games.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com