IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTT’SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS MONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDAY!!!!!!!!!!! And it’s a NCAA baseball selection Monday, yoo, y’all.
So let’s put on those orange helmets, grab some white bats, and swing away at the balls of Tennessee Volunteer-related thoughts coming in hot from my brain.
1) The Vols are SEC champs, but man, was I chomping on some fingernails there at the end. Those hooks from Aaron Combs to get the last two outs were FILTHY. And Cal Stark’s back pick – if the Vols end up going on to Omaha and doing something very special there – should be a prominent part of that highlight video. What a game-changing play by the Vols’ catcher. Nails.
2) The Vols know what they’re facing in the Knoxville regional, with the entire bracket released on Monday afternoon. The Vols will have Indiana, Northern Kentucky, and…….Southern Miss in their bracket. Oh, you sneaky, crafty NCAA selection committee, you.
3) Vol fans will remember last year when both Southern Miss and the Vols won their regionals to get to the Supers. Since they had the same seed, they had to pitch bids to the NCAA selection committee, who would then make a decision on who would host the super regional. Well, it went Southern Miss’s way. Well, the selection, that is. The Vols took the last two games to with the series and advance to the College World Series.
4) Now, the NCAA is giving the Vols the Golden Eagles at home. One year later. Let the Applebee’s and other municipal jokes between Hattiesburg and Knoxville resume.
5) I don’t know much about Northern Kentucky, but I know that if Tennessee plays their game, all should take care of itself. That game will start at 1:00 pm ET on Friday afternoon, so mark your calendars, folks.
6) For those optimists looking ahead to the super regional opponents, well, the NCAA got silly there, too. Not with the regional host, though. Overall 16 seed East Carolina fits and isn’t particularly noteworthy. However, Wake Forest is in that region. You all surely remember who’s on that Wake Forest team: former Vol flamethrower Chase Burns. Burns struck out 15 Tar Heels over 6 innings last weekend and has 13 or more strikeouts in his last 5 starts. Paul Skenes-ish type of strikeout artist right now. And if the Vols were to face him and the Demon Deacons in the supers in Knoxville, that could be a true challenge. It certainly would up the stakes of that series by a significant bit.
Hopefully the Vols are about to turn the top-seed-is-a-curse thing on its head. We’ll find out starting this weekend. Go Vols!