You have the most dangerous weapon in college baseball. He is not tired, and only seems to get stronger the longer he goes, but you don’t give him the chance to keep a hot team cold? And now, you face elimination? The #1 team in the country for over 2 months. What are you waiting for, Dave? We will probably never have this chance again. You basically have 2 pitchers, and that will be enough in Omaha. Start Kopps tomorrow.
If it’s a close game, can Kopps go nine innings? Never has tried, and probably not. I suspect we’ll see Wiggins start with hopes he can get two to three good innings with a very short leash. Kopps lurking in the bullpen, but don’t want to bring him in too early in case he’s needed to go the distance in a tight game.
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It hasn’t been announced that way, but I think that will be the plan, too.
Kopps isn’t invincible. If he enters in a scoreless game in the third or fourth, he has a better chance to be effective in the late innings than if he starts.
Costieu killed us today but so did the top of our order. Plus, NC States starter was great for 6 innings minus the Charlie mistake.
Before Costieu, I’d give the FR a chance(Tole). If we want to advance very far in Omaha, we gotta find more dependable pitchers than what we saw today.
I didn’t think putting Kopps in during 3rd inning today and burning him for tomorrow would’ve been smart either. If we get better production from top of the lineup today, that 4th inning meltdown would’ve been moot point.
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I think you’ll see Wiggy and Tole. Possibly Zeb, but he hasn’t pitched in a while. Hopefully those two finish with a lead and KK comes in to close it out
What does NC State’s third pitcher look like? RH or LH?
Good question. I’m more interested in NC states pitcher. I bet DVH is too. Any idea who what how on that guy?
The guy with the third most starts is freshman RHP Matt Willadsen (4.97 ERA, opponents hitting .254). He’s given up 12 homers.
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Their # 3 pitcher has been absolutley Bombed!! several games where he went 3-4 inn and gave up 7-9 hits 5-7 runs,he has been hit very hard, LT hit 2 2run bombs off him early last week,if he pitches and we can’t light him up then it will be really sad.
Our problem today wasn’t our pitching. Gonna take more than 4 hits to win on Sunday. It has been our achilles heal. Without a lot of walks and homers we often stumble.
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Its the same story starting pitching and or relievers , other then Wick & Kopps. Sooner or later that house of cards can fall when the bats are not banging and we saw it today.
I am personally shocked at the status of Connor Noland. Just 2 years ago Connor and Wick, Wick and Connor with both Pitching strong in CWS. The future was bright for pitching and now this year a struggle.
Wiggins scares me, i personally have not seen strong body of work saying he should start in 3rd game super regionals with a very good fast ball hitting team.
I am all in, woo pig
I know that coach says he would not play the starting pitcher from Friday but I would not be surprised. Everything is off the table now. Our bats need to wake up again. I have cousins who are Ole Miss and MS ST fans, I don’t want to have to live with their mouths If they advance and we don’t. 
You start someone and hope he gives you some good innings and bring in Kopps as late as you can but first sign of trouble he’s on the mound.
Yep. Got to hit the ball. Guys were swinging at balls off the plate. NCST took advantage of it. Will probably try it again tomorrow.
Start Connor.
Dave won’t. But he looks better to me than anyone not named Kevin right now. People talk about how bad he looked this year. Well, he got hurt. It takes awhile to regain confidence. Looks to me that its happening.
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Yeah. I think there’s a good chance we judged Connor too harshly by the way he performed after coming off that injury. He hasn’t pitched badly at all lately.
Our problem today was LL got tired a bit soon, showed some weakness in that heat, and then Costieu just had a terrible outing. It happens. We can’t afford for that to happen tomorrow, but no matter how we plan, what we do, there’s a chance some pitcher (even KK) makes a fatal mistake or mistakes. Of course, that can happen to their pitchers, too. As nervous as I am, I know we have hitters from 1-9 that can do a lot of damage. Maybe tomorrow they’ll do a lot of damage early & we can put Kopps in soon enough to close down any threats.
But let’s not underestimate the heat factor. The game will start at 5:00, so it shouldn’t be as bad as today, but even a good pitcher can get sapped in that sun.
Quality starting pitching is the weakness of this outstanding team. It is no secret, and it is no surprise that we are in a tough spot right now against North Carolina State. If Dave has an ace up his sleeve, it is time to pull it out and play it.
There is no secret. If DVH had an ace up his sleeve, you can bet he’d play it, but the fact is we can only hope our pitchers & hitters are better than theirs. Over the course of several games, ours will be better, but it now comes down to one game & we can’t know.
We know Kopps gives us our best chance, but he can’t go 9 innings. At least it’s highly unlikely he can. He pitched 20 today. We just have to be close or leading late enough in the game to bring him in. We have hitters who are capable of doing that, but they have pitchers who are capable of shutting us down, too. At least I think they do.
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If the pitchers from NCST continue to throw off the plate and we swing at them like today, going to get ugly. I just hope we don’t have to really depend on KK to get us through because of poor batting. If you go back and look, with the exception of yesterday when we hammered the pitchers who hardly ever pitched, we are not hitting the ball well for the last few games. Pitching will be fine I think, but we just have to hit the ball period.
When 1 pitcher allows 3 HR in 1 inning it is a pitching problem and if you can’t see that you need some new glasses! My wife was there and she could tell that BUT I’m glad DVH is our coach because he knows better than all of us!