I’ll be glued to Razorback baseball this weekend. I’m very excited about this team.
As others have noted, expectations from the pundits were not high before the season started. But, this looks like a fun, young team to watch…thinking about what could be next year, but also noting that this year just might not be “chump change”. Seriously, did anyone think this could be a top 10 program before the season began?
I’m not suggesting that I’ve been watching a real top 10 team. I’m wondering if we’d be 14-2 if our RPI was top 20 versus over 100. Still, this team seems to be growing and gaining confidence with each series.
Accordingly, the Hogs are facing a huge weekend. Many pundits expected Missouri to be bottom of the league, but they have solid pitching and they also might be a team that is growing.
Anyway, I like this as our first SEC series. We’re not facing chopped liver, but we’re also not facing the very best we’ll face over the next 60 days. How the Hogs respond will be extremely important for the rest of the season.
While there’s a lot to be excited about with opening pitch of conference play the hogs need to prove they are worthy of the top 10 ranking. The talented young arms along with the returing pitchers gives me hope that there can be a good season this year as well as next year.
At the plate they will need to be patient and take their swings at strikes and take advantage of hitter counts.
On the bases I haven’t seen this much speed on the hogs team in a while or maybe ever.
On defense they can make some dynamite plays and at times make you pull your hair out that’s baseball. It’s going to be a blast.
Yes I’m ready for the SEC season to start.a little bit concerned about this weekend because we are facing three very good left-handed pitchers and we have not hit left-handers near as good as right-handers.
I like our rotation but I’m not exactly sure Noland should be in there instead of wicklander he pitched very well against a very good Louisiana tech team last week so we’ll see how he does this weekend. I like this team’s ability to play small ball a lot because the pitching we are going to be seeing is going to require you to bunt, steal bases ,safety squeeze etc to get runs into win these clothes games.
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I like our rotation but I’m not exactly sure Noland should be in there instead of wicklander he pitched very well against a very good Louisiana tech team last week so we’ll see how he does this weekend…
[/quote]I like Noland’s composure thus far. It looks like he has the temperment of a big league starter. On the other hand, his involvement with the football team breeds questions about his ability to commit to baseball. (I normally like two sport athletes like Dion Sanders, but he didn’t play for our Hogs). It’s strange, to me, it looks like Wicklander is the perfect follow up (trainee) to Cronin’s position. Yet, I wonder if Wicklander should be starting (he has all the tools) and Noland function as more of the late inning guy with great control.
Last night I was watching YouTube video from the Kentucky series last year, which was the first SEC series. They were ranked 4th. We were ranked, you guessed it, 10th. Exactly where we are now. Swept the Jellycats and you know where we ended up, one pop fly from the NC.
I thought we’d be better than the preseason polls indicated. Martin, Kjerstad, Campbell, Cronin, Fletcher, some good young pitching. I think a super at BWS is very possible, which would be top 8 seed and winning a regional at home.
RPI is largely strength of schedule and I don’t worry about it much in early March. SOS will improve fast enough once we get into the meat of conference play, plus the Fallopians next week.
Swine you normally are spot on so I hope your right. Following football and basketball it would be a breathe of fresh air for the baseball team to host a super!
One more thing. According to Warren Nolan’s site, we have one bad loss this year. To the University of Southern California, which was 5-10 last time I looked. Rod Dedeaux must be spinning in his grave.
There’s a head coach that might not survive! That’s was just a weird game!
I still find it rough the way Fletcher hit homer to give us the lead and then we got beat. 1 bad loss won’t destroy a good season.
Broomheads won their conference opener at Cal yesterday, so they’re 6-10 now. Still shows as a bad loss though. Noticed SC has two midweek games (home and home two straight Tuesdays) coming up with Long Beach State, which has been a very good baseball school lately, but not this year. The Dirtbags are 2-14.
Dirtbags are 0-6 against the SEC, swept by Florida and Rebnecks. TCU took two of three at Long Beach. Their other win is against Michigan. Lost the opener to Minny last night at home. They start conference play next weekend against Fullerton, which is a good way for a bad team to start 0-3. I’d say they overscheduled juuuuust a tad.