Governor's Cup Thoughts by Todd 4-0 State
There are very few things in life that bring me satisfaction than beating Ole Miss four times in baseball. The Governor's Cup is very important to me because I think it helps with perception as far as who has the better team in the state of Mississippi. Even if you get swept, winning a trophy that says you are a champion means something. Congratulations to our team and Coach Cannizaro for winning the Governor's Cup. It really means a lot to our fans and I am really proud of this team- I always am anyway but they just made me that much more proud.
I knew that we would come out and play hard after the South Alabama debacle. That helped us win tonight even though that was a tough pill to swallow at the time.
I know that this doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of life, but I thought we won the hype video battle before the game too. What the hell was that Ole Miss? An obscure Walt Whitman poem or something? Try rock music next time. The Bee Gees would have been better than that crap.
Denver McQuary battled all night and I have to give Henderson and Lovelady for helping him get through that. McQuary is going to be good once he learns how to command his pitches. But right now he's really wild. He did seem to get better as the game wore on. Peyton Plumlee has been pretty good in relief but for whatever reason it seems like Ole Miss hits him pretty well. He did get out of the inning though when he needed to. Trysten Barlow showed me some Girodo's with the first and third situation and then getting a HUGE double play that killed a rally late. Billingsley somehow didn't hit Blackmon but then the next batter he got an out. I wish all of our pitchers would pitch like Riley Self and Spencer Price for that matter. They attack the freaking strike zone. We got behind on just about every Ole Miss hitter tonight. That's a hard way to pitch and why we lead the league in walks. But Self just came in and attacked the zone and they couldn't touch him. It's funny how that works. And he doesn't even throw as hard as some of our other guys.
Lovelady has done a great job with this staff. There are tons of balls in the dirt that he has to dig out every freaking game. He also did a nice job of hitting with his opposite field single.
Brent Rooker was pretty much our offense. I know that this goes without saying, but he's a special player. To step up in a game like that and hit a home run in that situation is special. And then the next at bat he gets down two strikes and he hammers a ball into the gap and doesn't try to do too much and then eventually scores our fourth run. He plays a great first base as well. Bortles misplay at third which really should have been scored an error was huge. That put runners on first and second and forced them to pitch to Rooker. That was a key moment in the game that we cashed in on. Hunter Stovall hit the ball well and he played great defense at second. He did have the baserunning mistake late. LA didn't have a great night at the plate but he made two very nice plays at third that ended innings. That's why he starts. Once his bat comes around he's going to be an even better player. Gridley also made some nice plays defensively and he picked up an RBI. He got hosed by the umpire on the double steal at third base. I could tell it took everything he had not to get in the umpire's face.
Cody Brown also got a hit and was solid as usual. Jake Mangum looked better at the plate tonight than he did against Alabama. I almost killed him for missing the cut off man and allowing Ole Miss to get another runner into scoring position. Once he learns to play a little bit more under control he's going to be that much better. Tanner Poole is still a work in progress- but he's well on his way to becoming a solid player. Vansau had a bad night. He made another baserunning mistake again by not picking up the third base coach on Lovelady's single and that cost us a base. I'd like to see MacNamee or Bragg get a shot at DH and that might happen.
This is the first time we have swept Ole Miss in baseball since 1997. That's too damn long. But I'm glad we did it. We won the Governor's Cup for the second year in a row and we have a chance now to match our longest win streak in that series next year. We've also won the Governor's Cup four out of the last five years. And since John Cohen's first year that counts in 2011 we have won it five out of the last seven. One of those years that we lost it we were under .500. Some of our fans need to stop comparing ourselves to Ole Miss baseball. Yes, Baseball America rated their recruiting class number one this year, but we have outrecruited them pretty much every other year since 2015. I think Cann is only going to take that up a notch. And I think he is going to start to retain more of our upperclassmen too.
Aside from that I'm not sure that Ole Miss has really ever passed us in baseball. They did draw closer. And yes we had some rebuilding years thanks to LT and Polk II. But since Ole Miss baseball started in 2001 we have been to Omaha more times than they have including a Natioanal Finals Round. They have been to five Super Regionals and we have also been to five in that span. We've actually been to six in our history but I'm not counting 2000 for us because that was before Bianco. They have one SEC Tournament Championship- we have three. Including one over "their best team ever". We both have one SEC Championship- but they had to share theirs. They did renovate their baseball field. We're about to build the best college baseball field in America. It's way past time for our fans to keep comparing ourselves to them and wishing we were "more consistent". Especially since we're taking things to the next level and the only reason we haven't been as consistent is because LT had no vision and sucked as an AD in the 2000's. We've fixed that now. And I think we're about to take it to the next level.
And part of taking things to the next level is we need to get ourselves to Starkville and break some more attendance records and close the old ballpark the way it deserves to be. Auburn is tough this year and Butch has done an amazing job with them and I am not surprised that he has turned them around in such a short time. We control our own destiny at this point. All we can do is take it one game at a time. The next two weeks are HUGE. Auburn in Starkville and then A&M on the road. After that we play a struggling Georgia team in Athens and then I expect the LSU series to be just as epic. The good news is we only have one OOC game left and that's going to help our team- both pitchers and players as we're pretty banged up. I think that DH against Alabama and having the weekend off really helped us out and then we get two days to get ready for Auburn. If I am not mistaken the rest of our SEC series except for LSU are all Fri/Sat/Sun so we should get some time to rest our guys up. This team is fun to watch and I can't wait to see what they do next. We just have to be patient because they're not going to be pretty but 4-2 counts just as much in the win column as 16-0.
Also- great job by MSU of bringing the Egg Bowl Trophy to the game and the women's Final Four Trophy. That was a nice touch.
Also x2- Don't worry about our RPI. We're 16 last time I checked although Oregon has a game with Oregon State that was postponed that I don't know the status of. We keep winning and our RPI will be fine and I think this game will look good on our resume towards a host and National Seed spot. Auburn, A&M, and LSU are all top 50 type teams. And even Georgia is a bordeline top 100 team that we have on the road. Let's finish this out Dawgs and win the whole freaking thing!
GTHOM and Hail State!
