fuck me. That was a bummer.
If you put Blanco in the 3rd spot then she is guaranteed to be up in the 1st inning and she protects Romero.
I agree with you. Blanco is easily one of the hottest hitters on the team and Christner has been struggling as of late. I think Blanco being moved up has to be considered.
deliver runs in spots that should equal runs. Really have to wonder if we should be sending more people and fucking going for it. Because that run is not getting in when we lose these games. I missed a lot of this season with work, but I remember seeing a lot of that last year. Tonight was more of the same.
I don't think people are hating on her. It just doesn't make sense for Hutch to play her in this spot when you have other people who have done it all year long. It was an automatic steal each time any Minny player got on 1st.
I agree. But people who are saying "Dont Start Alexander again" or "she played awful and cost us the the game" is sort of hating on her in my eyes. She hasnt started a game all year so its not like Hutch just decided to throw her into the fire I am guessing. I trust Hutch and if she thinks starting Alexander at catcher and moving Falk to the designated player position gives her the best chance to win than I am all for it.
We'll still be the #2 seed for the NCAA tourney and Hutch has plenty to coach about this week - errors, no timely hitting, awful pitching accuracy. That all needs to improve greatly to have any chance in the tourney.
I agree that Coach Hutch def has the attention of the players and that they will use this game as a learning experience. But in terms of coaching, I just don't understand what people are saying she can do. The girls have taken millions of ground balls in their career so its not like there is anything she can do to fix the errors. You can't replicate timely hitting in practice no matter how hard you try. You can't simulate a Big Ten championship or spot in the super regional. I guess you can kind of fix the pitching but I think Betsa just had an off game and maybe she was fatigured a little bit.
As long as the players stick to one pitch softball i think they will have a good chance to make a postseason run.
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with the semis on Friday and the final on Saturday. This allows both teams to be equally rested for the most important game.
Also, Florida lost in their SEC semi, 2-1 to Auburn. Their freshman 3rd string pitcher taking the loss.
Thank you for the perspective provided that UF loss. I'm just glad the women on the team are more resilient than all the whiney babies posting in this thread.
Auburn is significantly better than Minnesota.
They are currently ranked #8 nationally, but will very likely be seeded in the 5-7 range after beating Florida and then going on to win the SEC tournament.
Minnesota is about the level of the best team we'd play in the Regional Round.
Auburn is a WCWS level opponent.
But yes, all teams have their bad days and I do expect Michigan will bounce back very strongly.
I'm just a lot more worried about the Super Regional round than I was before.
I checked how the other Div I conferences handle their championship format.
Of the 10 major conferences, 3 don't have a championship tournament.
Of the 7 remaining, all but the B1G begin a day earlier, on Wednesday.
5 play their championship game alone on Saturday, although 2 play a 2 loss format and a team could play twice on Friday. Games on these days begin earlier, between 11AM and noon.
Only 2 conferences play 2 games on Saturday. The MAC which has a sort of loser's bracket game in the morning to decide who plays the winner's bracket in the title game at 3PM.
That leaves the B1G as the only conference that play the semis and finals on the same day (3 games on the same day) and the only conference that has an afternoon start for the 1st game, leading to the fiasco this year of a game ending in the cold and humidity at 1AM, with one team playing 6 straight hours.
In short, the B1G technocrats prove once again that outside of marketing the B1G TV network, they haven't a clue.
Hopefully, someone can bring this to the attention of Warde Manuel.