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Post by UICJohn on May 28, 2019 6:48:13 GMT -6
UIC was chosen to participate in the Louisville Regional. They will be representing as the #4 seed while Louisville takes #1 and are also joined with #2 Indiana and #3 Illinois State.
Their only experience with any of those teams is two meetings against Illinois State this season in which UIC split. They lost the first game at ISU 4-0 and won their home match 6-1.
UIC will open up against Louisville this Friday evening. Louisville is 43-15 on the season. We only have one common opponent with them as they defeated Northern Kentucky by a score of 11-2 back in early April.
The tournament is a double elimination with the winner of the two Friday games playing on Saturday and the same for the two losing sides.
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Post by Big D on Jun 2, 2019 15:01:37 GMT -6
I saw some of our two games in Louisville. We really got off to great starts in both games with early homers, but we just always seem to fall apart at some point. We walk somebody, or hit somebody, or have a mental lapse in defense, and then timely hitting by the opponent brings those runs home. The games are long enough that the more talented team can generally wear you down.
I really wish we could win some games in the tourney. Our past two tournaments provided us with numerous chances to get a win, but we just can’t seem to even get lucky...even with less talent, you’d think eventually luck would get us 1 victory. Hell, Illinois State beat both Indiana and Louisville and we beat them earlier this year...so we can win games, but for whatever reason we always fall short.
Look at the Louisville game...we come out hot and take a 3-0 lead...we may have had a 4th if a real close call at 2nd went our way. There was another call later that went Louisville’s way where they stole 2nd but looked clearly out on the replay (and announcers said he was out)...that guy later scored. Sometimes I think the umps give the 50/50 calls to the better team because...well they have the talent so they must’ve beaten the throw...or must’ve made the out prior to the runner arriving. There is capability for replay but not sure how it’s used or initiated...but those two calls were game changers. And let’s not forget, up 3-0, the wind took our catcher, who earlier hit a home run, face first into a foul ball screen...he had to leave the game, which was doubly bad because our only other catcher was our DH...so he had to move to catcher and our pitcher, who never batted before, was forced into the DH spot hitting clean-up. We had the tying run on 2nd in the 9th with no outs and then their closer came in and struck out the side. Ugh. We just can’t catch any breaks. Granted the guy was throwing 100 mph, but still...
Anyway we competed, and I’m happy about that, and we had some fans there. I’d like to see us get over the hump and at least play in a regional final at some point. Coach Dee deserves it. Jeff Mercer, former WSU player and coach, and now Indiana coach, had some great things to say about a UIC and coach Dee after our game.
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Post by UICJohn on Jun 3, 2019 14:44:43 GMT -6
I could only follow along both games on Twitter and definitely some good and bad to it. I think the best part is that we showed that we could compete. And on top of that, this is a team I wasn't sure if we would be able to compete. We started out slowly and never really seemed to hit on all cylinders all year. I honestly thought that Wright State would run away with the tournament and they didn't. Granted, we didn't take them down on either of their losses but we beat the teams that did and that's how it all goes down.
We came out and started both games well getting out to early leads. We didn't seem intimidated and play as though we didn't belong on the same field. But at the same time, that is the frustrating part. Chipping away, back and forth, and just want a weekend where we could get more than one thing to go our way. Unfortunately, that wasn't this weekend. But I just want it to be sometime. We have won two tournament games before, so we can do it. The real difficulty with these regionals is that they really reward depth but our pitching has shown that they have that and I think we do have the recipe to really score an upset one of these years.
With where this team was, I look at the season as a success. I didn't think we'd be here and we are and we competed well. The last time we made the tournament really hurt. When Ryan Calabrese hit the grand slam in Game #1 I thought we had it for sure only to lose by a run and the second game was a heartbreaker too.
It's hard to keep up with baseball recruiting partially because I feel like its just hard to find stuff. I know that Hampe is a Freshman. But Ota and Padilla, both big contributors, will leave big shoes to fill. I'm guessing that it will be Wright State and UIC next year, and perhaps UWM is back to some winning ways.
I have to admit that several years back when we were being tossed around as a possible MVC invitation, part of my excitement was around baseball as they are much more solid in their programs. They had 3 teams sent to the tournament this year, one being ISU which was in our regional and a #3 seed. I cannot say this with complete reliability but I don't believe that the Horizon League has ever sent multiple team or has ever had a non-#4 seed.
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