Orange Blooded [3238]
TigerPulse: 100%
Posts: 2498
Joined: 11/30/13
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Gotta say this...
May 29, 2016, 8:15 PM
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Had anyone told me at the beginning of the year that the baseball team would win over 40 games, win the ACC title, and not only be hosting a regional but in the mix for a national seed come tournament selection time, to be honest, I would've thought you were either crazy or smoking something. I thought that with the dropoff we had after 2010, that Monte Lee and the staff was gonna need a couple years to straighten things out before we would be back into discussions like that.
Gotta give credit to Coach Lee, the staff, and players for doing an outstanding job. From start of the year to now, they just went out their and competed their butts off. Wasn't pretty at times - pitching staff breakdowns, fielding errors still bit us in the butt alot this year, the big slump we had in the middle of ACC play - but this team found a way to win, to fight back and turn things around when things weren't looking good (either in a game or after the mid season slump). Easy to point at guys like Beer and Okey and what they done all year, but just look at what people did when we needed somebody to do something.
Krall: guy came into the year with a career record of 3-4 and 5 saves. 10-1, 5 saves, All-ACC, pitched combined 17 innings against 2 top 10 teams late in the year.
Schmidt: fought what he had to fight through, started out good then he became a casualty of the slump. Pitched the two best games of his career late in the year, 1 to get us to ACC tourney, 2nd to knock off the division champs & get us to today.
Rohlman: 0 HR all year, hits 2 against division champs to help win that game
Triller: Nothing more to be said. Guy w/ limited action all year, played like he was in the running for National Player of the Year this weekend.
Those are just a few examples. All year, you can look and see it, somebody making something happen when the team needed it. Continuing to grind away and finding a way to win. This ACC title win, to me, has a lot of the feel of football's 2011 title - even though Coach Swinney didn't have all his pieces in place yet, when that win happened, everything else (recruiting, wins, rising up in the national level) just started falling in place and started tailing along for the ride. I know Coach Lee ain't got all his pieces in place yet, but feel today might be the start of the domino effect.
So happy for the baseball program and hope that they continue to build upon this not only for a run at Omaha this year, but for the years to come.
GO TIGERS!!!
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