Last year this is a 1-2 weekend. Most noticeable difference for me this weekend was no dicking around, decisive decision making no letting things hang in the balance and see what happens.
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Last year this is a 1-2 weekend. Most noticeable difference for me this weekend was no dicking around, decisive decision making no letting things hang in the balance and see what happens.
Not much more you can ask for than a 3-0 start. Hail State!
Hofstra ain't half bad. Pretty much every guy they trotted out there on the mound was low 90s with a decent breaking ball.
SEC pitching of course will be way harder, but it's not like this is Alcorn State with guys throwing 84 while walking the yard. They were decent.
Yeah. That's my biggest take from this series. We look much more fundamentally sound. Were there some mistakes? Sure. It wasn't perfect. But BOC made some critical calls like the squeeze play that got us a run in game three and a delayed double steal on them in game one that we executed perfectly. Those little things are the difference sometimes. You can tell that BOC has a good feel for coaching. We left Billingsley in too long I thought but overall the pitching staff management was much better.
We have some guys that need to stop expanding the zone and chasing.
Defense was really good too. I think we had one error in the field, a throw that allowed a runner to move up where we missed the cutoff man and one ball that got past the catcher. That's the whole weekend. Last year all of that and more happens in one game.
We have some things to clean up. But we have a lot less to clean up compared to a typical year under the last staff.
I am happy for the sweep. Am I disappointed we didn?t score like 20 runs every game? Well yeah but I know I am unreasonable in that regard. I agree that last years coaching staff would have found a way to bumble around waiting on a player to step up when a coach needed too. BOC commanded the ship to victories in all 3 games. Great job.
And I'll be that guy- if you look around the SEC a lot of the scores are similar to ours this weekend. Sure there were a few blowouts. There were also some losses- Florida to UAB and Georgia to Wright State. And if we lost the way Georgia did we would be having a five alarm message board meltdown.
The portal I think levels the playing field out some early. A team like Hofstra could have a lot of guys that have played together for a few years and maybe add in a guy from the portal here and there.
Our team is basically completely new. The only guys returning to their same position are Ace Reese and Noah. Chance has moved back to LF and Frei has moved to second. No way SEC teams built like that have to take time to gel.
Wonder if Pitzer was saved for Troy.
No Freshmen used this weekend. So Pitzer and Logar were the two veterans not used. The use of Billingsley and Gleason were curious, not guys we have been talking about and the game was still in-question when they were used. Billingsley was about to be crushed when he had walked the bases loaded. Gleason was alright.
Troy lost 2 of 3 this weekend to Mercer.
I thought the ump squeezed the plate on Billingsley a couple of times, but also fear SEC hitters would've punished Billingsley. Hoped I'm wrong. Am curious why Tyler Pitzer wasn't used before Billingsley (I really thought Pitzer would be a high-leverage RPer for us).