Not the same old Ok St, Missouri St, ORU bunch
Should be able to pitch off on Game 1 and have Zay for Game 2?
I do too but Cal won’t be easy though looks like they have 2 good pitchers and a good lineup…
Cal is #30 RPI. #31 is Misery which got sent home.
Cal won 1 of 3 at Alex Box in early March. The good Pac 12 teams generally handled them, except they won a series at Arizona, but nobody swept them. USC handled them too.
I think we got a good draw. One of the weaker 2 seeds, TCU was the last team in, and Central Connecticut is #183 RPI. I could certainly see pitching Wick and saving Zay for Saturday.
The “new” regional pairings have been directly impacted by the way the top 16 are seeded. Instead of the match-ups being regional, all teams are seeded in that group.
I was about to pose that same question. I’d think any of our weekend starters should be able to handle Conn St., but I know there’s a school of thought that a team should never do that. I suppose there’s something to be said for keeping the same rotation with same number or rest days, but it’s always seemed to me that in a double elimination tournament where the first two games are equally important as far as keeping us out of the losers bracket.
Central Conn is a Quadrant 4 team. We were 10-0 against Q4 teams, most of them midweek games. I will be surprised if we don’t pitch Wick on Friday.
i agree we should pitch off in game 1 and would be a heck of a matchup with Jared Horne 1.82 ERA from Cal provided they don’t throw him against TCU which they may considering TCU ace is very good so that may work in our favor would be a huge gamble for them not to throw him now that I’m thinking about it.
Yeah, Central Conn, not Conn St. Goes to show how little attention I paid to that 4 seed.
Regardless, I kinda like the idea of pitching off in this game.
Well it is Central Connecticut State University. 
And it doesn’t matter what we think the pitching rotation should or shouldn’t be. It matters what DVH thinks and usually for good reasons that “we” sometimes miss.
While I think we should throw off, I’ll be shocked if DVH does it. He is not big at all on throwing off.
It’s the NCAAT. Teams are going to have good players. And we could lose.
But in terms of draws, it was about as good as we could get.
I don’t like OM being on the other side. Not because I think they’re better—just because the familiarity (5 games). That makes for nip-and-tuck games.
It seems like I remember in years past we some guys (Boyce comes to mind), that we could pitch on Friday, and if we got a lead, keep the pitch count down, then bring him back on Sunday if needed.
If my memory is correct, we didn’t start Stanek (our ace) the first game at KSU Regional a few years ago. We lost.
I’ll go with whatever DVH decides, but if we were at the KSU regional, we were a 2 seed playing a 3 seed or vice versa. This week we’re playing a very weak 4 seed (a Q4 team). Nobody says we should start our mid-week pitchers, but we all agree Isaiah is our ace & he gives us a better chance of beating a 2 or 3 seed than either of our other two starters. However, Wicklander or Noland are certainly good enough to hold down runs, it’s not likely Cen Conn will have the hitters TCU or Cal have. I doubt Cen Conn’s ace is anywhere nearly as good as the better SEC pitchers we’ve faced.
While the first game is crucial, so is the second game. We have to win both to play for the regional championship in our 3rd game. Lose either of them & we have to win 3 straight & will have to go one game deeper into our BP than whoever we’d play out of the winners bracket.
All that said, DVH knows more about the whole situation than I do.
Barrett Astin started that game, but he wasn’t the problem. He pitched seven innings and only one run (unearned) scored. The issue that game, like that whole season, was that there was no semblance of an offense to complement that great pitching staff and put all the pressure on the pitchers to be close to perfect. Bryant scored three against Jalen Beeks in the eighth inning and Arkansas had no answer.
Guys, settle down. I wasn’t 2nd guessing the decision start Stanek. I was just trying to contribute to the conversation.
I’m fully aware that our coaches know more about the situation than any of us.