2016 West Regional - Spokane, WA

[Ron Boerger]

Just FYI, Cortland lost this morning and is currently playing the winner-take-all final game, up early, but potential upset alert......

Won the second game 10-9.

[CAK72B]

PLU comes out firing puts up 2 quickly to make it 10-6 chasing Flores...2nd and 3rd no outs B7 with Hoffman coming in for the Tigers

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

For all the haterade thrown at Case Western, it's interesting that a #6 seed that wouldn't have gotten a Pool C beat all the other supposedly great teams in the regional.

The reality is that if you lose the 3/4 game in a 6 team regional, you're up against it because you usually are going to play the #1 seed coming off a win. Case drawing the host team was just more bad luck.

I imagine not many teams win the regional from the 3/4 spot if the 1 seed wins its first game.

Mideast got 2 teams sent out of region and into the 3/4 round of a 6 team regional. Something I don't imagine West teams have to deal with too often.

Only one team in the tournament ends the season happy.

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

I agree with everyone else who said that Oxy or TLU or CTX were probably deserving of a bid and would have been as good or better than CWR.

Trinity beat Tyler worse than they beat Case. I thought TLU could have gotten in, but it wouldn't have been over Case.

They probably should have shipped a 2 seed into this region rather than 3/4. But then they got most of those wrong too. The whole bracket was a mess aside from the 1 seeds.

Most of the low SOS teams they put in as Pool C's didn't do very well.

[CAK72B]

For all the haterade thrown at Case Western, it's interesting that a #6 seed that wouldn't have gotten a Pool C beat all the other supposedly great teams in the regional.

The reality is that if you lose the 3/4 game in a 6 team regional, you're up against it because you usually are going to play the #1 seed coming off a win. Case drawing the host team was just more bad luck.

I imagine not many teams win the regional from the 3/4 spot if the 1 seed wins its first game.

Mideast got 2 teams sent out of region and into the 3/4 round of a 6 team regional. Something I don't imagine West teams have to deal with too often.

Only one team in the tournament ends the season happy.

If I remember correctly I think the last time that happened in the West was 2012 when the loser came back to beat the 1 seed

[Ralph Turner]

For all the haterade thrown at Case Western, it's interesting that a #6 seed that wouldn't have gotten a Pool C beat all the other supposedly great teams in the regional.

The reality is that if you lose the 3/4 game in a 6 team regional, you're up against it because you usually are going to play the #1 seed coming off a win. Case drawing the host team was just more bad luck.

I imagine not many teams win the regional from the 3/4 spot if the 1 seed wins its first game.

Mideast got 2 teams sent out of region and into the 3/4 round of a 6 team regional. Something I don't imagine West teams have to deal with too often.

Only one team in the tournament ends the season happy.

Thanks for the comment ElRotorno.

I prefaced one of my comments with "blatant West Region provincialism".

CWRU gets to boost its SOS with the cumulative effect that the UAA schools can build SOS's in every sport.  UAA schools can "cherry pick" their non-conference opponents with quality winnable games.

The numerically-tiny isolated West Region has a paucity of outside-the-region opponents so the SOS hovers around .500.

The only team that has even been close to Trinity has been PLU, 7-3 and now 12-7 losses.

We expect to see the occasional first round upset by a mid-level conference Pool A who has real ace.

By the second round, I expect almost every team of better-than-average quality to have a strong #2.  But, TU definitely got to CWRU.

The loss by UTTyler (the #4 ASC regular season finisher) in the third game was what I feared.  Fortunately game #4 by UTT was a respectable showing.

[108 Stitches]

#Tigerpile. Going back to Appleton and finish what the weather and NCAA prevented them from finishing last year.

Congrats to a gritty PLU team in a strong performance loosing the first game and coming back through the loser bracket. Wow is all I can say.

[Ralph Turner]

For all the haterade thrown at Case Western, it's interesting that a #6 seed that wouldn't have gotten a Pool C beat all the other supposedly great teams in the regional.

The reality is that if you lose the 3/4 game in a 6 team regional, you're up against it because you usually are going to play the #1 seed coming off a win. Case drawing the host team was just more bad luck.

I imagine not many teams win the regional from the 3/4 spot if the 1 seed wins its first game.

Mideast got 2 teams sent out of region and into the 3/4 round of a 6 team regional. Something I don't imagine West teams have to deal with too often.

Only one team in the tournament ends the season happy.

If I remember correctly I think the last time that happened in the West was 2012 when the loser came back to beat the 1 seed

Yes, Round 1 loser #4 seed LaVerne beat #1 seed CTX in second round game.

[108 Stitches]

ElRetornodelEspencio: I was not at the Regional, but those who I know were there said that CWRU was a good team but not up to the level of the other Western teams. I think someone said they were "a step behind" which is a pretty descriptive visual.

Great experience for them but I think if you put TLU against them in a three game series TLU would come out on top.

All conjecture at this point. Congrats to Trinity now go finish the job!

[CAK72B]

The A side of the World Series is going to be stacked. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers (Cortland/Lacrosse/Trinity) are all in it and Trinity opens up with UWL in a rematch/vengeance game from last year. I have to think that will be the most looked forwarded to game of Day 1 in Wisconsin

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

For all the haterade thrown at Case Western, it's interesting that a #6 seed that wouldn't have gotten a Pool C beat all the other supposedly great teams in the regional.

The reality is that if you lose the 3/4 game in a 6 team regional, you're up against it because you usually are going to play the #1 seed coming off a win. Case drawing the host team was just more bad luck.

I imagine not many teams win the regional from the 3/4 spot if the 1 seed wins its first game.

Mideast got 2 teams sent out of region and into the 3/4 round of a 6 team regional. Something I don't imagine West teams have to deal with too often.

Only one team in the tournament ends the season happy.

Thanks for the comment ElRotorno.

I prefaced one of my comments with "blatant West Region provincialism".

CWRU gets to boost its SOS with the cumulative effect that the UAA schools can build SOS's in every sport.  UAA schools can "cherry pick" their non-conference opponents with quality winnable games.

The numerically-tiny isolated West Region has a paucity of outside-the-region opponents so the SOS hovers around .500.

Well Case plays a really good schedule, obviously. They're not cherry picking anything. But what they do get to do that is an advantage is use their whole staff against teams that have conference schedules.

But TX Lu had I think the best SOS in the region or the best among the good teams, and I thought they should have gotten in based on that and they didn't. So I dunno. I was pretty confident of Whitworth because they hit the bullseye with the 3 darts they had.

But I mean Case lost to a home team in a very atypical ballpark dimensions and altitude-wise (major hitters park even for minor leagues, let alone metal bats and D3 pitching), and then got to play the #1 seed. That's gonna be tough for a lot of teams to handle. It's not as tough as what Marietta got (a probable first-team AA and possible national pitcher of the year on a quality team in the first round) for their move out of region, but it's still pretty tough. It's too bad they couldn't have moved one of the South teams like Birmingham or Shenandoah into the West -- that probably would have given a lot more balanced bracket in both regionals.

I've wondered before if as a 3/4 seed you shouldn't just give away the game and throw your ace against the #1 seed's presumably #2 option, because if you do happen to win, you're in really good shape at that point -- but winning that game if you go after the first one with your ace and lose is really tough.

The West being an 8 team regional would be something that would change the dynamic greatly as well, because most of the West teams don't usually have the pitching depth that eastern and northern teams do. And this year, like someone else said, there don't appear to be the all-american caliber aces this year out there either like there have been a lot of years.

For the record, I've had Cortland, LaCrosse and Emory the top 3 teams all year in my completely unofficial and unwritten rankings. After that it could go a lot of ways. Those 3 have all won a bunch of games and played good teams to do it.

It does look like we're going to get a lot of #1 seeds through the regionals, which should make for a good series, even if most of the regionals have been pretty blah because of some mistakes in the 2-3 seeds (including at least one 2 seed I wouldn't hvae even had in the tournament).

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

ElRetornodelEspencio: I was not at the Regional, but those who I know were there said that CWRU was a good team but not up to the level of the other Western teams. I think someone said they were "a step behind" which is a pretty descriptive visual.

Great experience for them but I think if you put TLU against them in a three game series TLU would come out on top.

All conjecture at this point. Congrats to Trinity now go finish the job!

Did they say the same thing about Tyler that got splatted by even more against Trinity? Case just had the misfortune of facing them earlier.

Doesn't seem like much of anyone in this regional had anything for Trinity.

I'm sure any of you all are more than welcome to schedule with Coach Englander at Progressive Field where they play a couple games every year.

[Purple Heys]

Sorry, but your Case was dismissed. The "if my cow had horns it'd be a bull," argument is not persuasive; but it does feature some bull.  Moving on. 

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

Sorry, but your Case was dismissed. The "if my cow had horns it'd be a bull," argument is not persuasive; but it does feature some bull.  Moving on. 

Great, classy stuff.

Just to circle back to something I said earlier because while it was accurate this year, it will not be accurate going forward -- Case and the entire UAA will be playing a proper conference schedule (sort of) next year. 3-game, Fri-Sun series. That means Case is traveling to Atlanta, Chicago and New York City in late March and April for *conference* series next year, and schools from St. Louis and Boston are visiting Cleveland. So no more UAA tournament in Florida and then playing all non-conference the rest of the year.

That's only going to strengthen the schedules of the UAA teams further.

[ElRetornodelEspencio]

The A side of the World Series is going to be stacked. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers (Cortland/Lacrosse/Trinity) are all in it and Trinity opens up with UWL in a rematch/vengeance game from last year. I have to think that will be the most looked forwarded to game of Day 1 in Wisconsin

There are 6 #1 seeds that won regionals. It should be a great tournament.

I'm not sure if there was an injury issue or what, But LaRoche's best pitcher (and a probable All-American) only threw 3 innings in the regional and they still came back through the loser's bracket.