and nice way to bounce back. Although I didn't make it over to Athens, I followed as best I could and came away with the following:
-I'm sure that CJ Smith is disappointed in the walks, but he did a nice job getting out of trouble a few times tonight. He really impressed me last season with his composure... In fact, he was the reason I was so confident going into that very last game against Duke in the regional. He's not the biggest guy, and his stuff is good, but not great... He just competes, though, and he's not the kind of guy who is going to beat himself.
-Randon Jernigan may have earned some more playing time in LF tonight.
-Good to see Mason Meadows getting into the action offensively. It's been a slower start for him after he was such a big part of the success last year.
-No walks in 2 innings pitched for Cole Wilcox is probably the best individual note of the night.
-We drew 10 walks tonight.... And I don't know because I wasn't there, maybe most or all were nowhere close. It seemed like the issue last night was a bad approach by a lot of our hitters. I'm sure that the temptation tonight was to come out and really swing the bats, and I think that the 10 walks shows a lot more maturity by our hitters. I wouldn't think that much of it if we hadn't been 2-hit last night, but since we were I view the plate discipline this evening even more favorably.
-Good to see James Williams getting an inning, but I'm a bit surprised that we haven't seen Jack Gowen since the Dayton series. I hope he's not hurt... that guy is really fun to watch with all his different arm angles.
-I've said this a few times the past couple of years, but it's hard to believe how far Kennesaw State has fallen since their Super Regional team... in spite of their location, I imagine it's pretty hard to recruit there, but still... They're just not very competitive right now. I don't think anyone saw it turning this hard south.
-Back in 2010, we lost to Kennesaw State at home by a score of 11-1. That was such a young team and then we had a number of injuries on top of it... we were in such a bad way in March that season (April too). Anyway, I remember on the post game show Jeff Dantzler saying something to the effect of "Well coach, some nights you just run into a good pitcher..." Perno responded by saying "Well, you can say that, but...." before launching into about 12 minutes of uninterrupted commentary on what was wrong and what needed to happen to fix it. When Kennesaw State pushed across that run in the 9th to make it 11-1, I thought about how weird it was to be on the other side of that score to those guys (albeit different teams). We shouldn't be losing to LIU Brooklyn as we did last night, but I think some order was restored this evening. I think that momentum is a much bigger deal in college baseball than pro ball and it's good that we are taking some to Statesboro with us.
-I made the comment before the game this past Saturday "I wonder how many National Anthems Scott Stricklin has heard in his life..." I mean, tonight was the 830th college baseball game for which he's been a head coach. But then, he was also an assistant coach, he played for several years in the minor leagues, played college baseball at Kent State, etc... I bet he's heard it so much that when someone sings it, when they go like 3 seconds over the "standard" recorded Anthem, he knows it's long.
-I saw this tweet from Georgia baseball tonight. Pretty cool that he won his 500th game. I don't want to sound too negative here and I'm sure that this wasn't Stricklin's idea, but the man is 150-141-1 here in Athens.... "All I do is win" is probably a little bit misplaced, in my opinion.
-I'm sure that CJ Smith is disappointed in the walks, but he did a nice job getting out of trouble a few times tonight. He really impressed me last season with his composure... In fact, he was the reason I was so confident going into that very last game against Duke in the regional. He's not the biggest guy, and his stuff is good, but not great... He just competes, though, and he's not the kind of guy who is going to beat himself.
-Randon Jernigan may have earned some more playing time in LF tonight.
-Good to see Mason Meadows getting into the action offensively. It's been a slower start for him after he was such a big part of the success last year.
-No walks in 2 innings pitched for Cole Wilcox is probably the best individual note of the night.
-We drew 10 walks tonight.... And I don't know because I wasn't there, maybe most or all were nowhere close. It seemed like the issue last night was a bad approach by a lot of our hitters. I'm sure that the temptation tonight was to come out and really swing the bats, and I think that the 10 walks shows a lot more maturity by our hitters. I wouldn't think that much of it if we hadn't been 2-hit last night, but since we were I view the plate discipline this evening even more favorably.
-Good to see James Williams getting an inning, but I'm a bit surprised that we haven't seen Jack Gowen since the Dayton series. I hope he's not hurt... that guy is really fun to watch with all his different arm angles.
-I've said this a few times the past couple of years, but it's hard to believe how far Kennesaw State has fallen since their Super Regional team... in spite of their location, I imagine it's pretty hard to recruit there, but still... They're just not very competitive right now. I don't think anyone saw it turning this hard south.
-Back in 2010, we lost to Kennesaw State at home by a score of 11-1. That was such a young team and then we had a number of injuries on top of it... we were in such a bad way in March that season (April too). Anyway, I remember on the post game show Jeff Dantzler saying something to the effect of "Well coach, some nights you just run into a good pitcher..." Perno responded by saying "Well, you can say that, but...." before launching into about 12 minutes of uninterrupted commentary on what was wrong and what needed to happen to fix it. When Kennesaw State pushed across that run in the 9th to make it 11-1, I thought about how weird it was to be on the other side of that score to those guys (albeit different teams). We shouldn't be losing to LIU Brooklyn as we did last night, but I think some order was restored this evening. I think that momentum is a much bigger deal in college baseball than pro ball and it's good that we are taking some to Statesboro with us.
-I made the comment before the game this past Saturday "I wonder how many National Anthems Scott Stricklin has heard in his life..." I mean, tonight was the 830th college baseball game for which he's been a head coach. But then, he was also an assistant coach, he played for several years in the minor leagues, played college baseball at Kent State, etc... I bet he's heard it so much that when someone sings it, when they go like 3 seconds over the "standard" recorded Anthem, he knows it's long.
-I saw this tweet from Georgia baseball tonight. Pretty cool that he won his 500th game. I don't want to sound too negative here and I'm sure that this wasn't Stricklin's idea, but the man is 150-141-1 here in Athens.... "All I do is win" is probably a little bit misplaced, in my opinion.
