spartan2785

It's just never going to be a baseball conference. The weather makes it so, you don't have the recruiting base, the weather, the backing, basically everything you need to be a power. It can get better, I think it will get better with the additions of the west coast schools, but when you are going to a recruit's home it's difficult to convince them to come up to Ohio to practice in freezing conditions in January as you get ready of for the season, no amount of indoor facilities is going to make up for all year weather that is conducive to baseball. The northwest is able to get by since we only have rain, but snow basically means the field will be not be usable. Oregon can still be successful, you only have to look at teams like Coastal Carolina, UC Irvine, East Carolina to see teams that do well coming from lesser conferences, but they'll need to maximize their non-conference schedule, and they might have to win on the road in the tourney since the SEC is going to always have about 6 of the top 8 seeds.

Yeah, I am very worried about that series against Iowa, they're a good team, it's on the road, it's going to be tough. It would be one thing if Iowa was a top 25 team but they're non-con schedule was so abysmal they aren't ranked even though they're top of the conference for the moment. Can't do anything about it though other than keep winning.

This is why I said it's going to be very difficult to get a top 8 bid in this conference unless the conference significantly improves. You just have too many bad teams and not enough good teams, it's hard to win every game, and when you do lose to a mediocre team who played a bad schedule it just tanks your RPI. It's not Oregon's fault, and while I do understand why they aren't a top 8 seed, I still think they deserve better than 16. Looks like they will have to play an absolute monster of a non-conference schedule in the future. We don't even have the advantage of playing a rival in OSU who is good. It's sort of like Gonzaga in basketball.

Punishing a team for losing one game and going from around 7-5 or so in the rankings to 16 seems excessive to me. If Oregon was in the SEC they would have dropped like 2 spots or so. Of course you want to win every game, but it's one game against a team that eventually won the tournament, they got hot apparently at the right time, it just seems ridiculous to me when you have the 8 seed with 15 losses to Oregon's 7.

Get the feeling it will be nearly impossible to get a top 8 bid in the B1G, just a horrible conference for baseball and softball. The opening round loss hurts of course, but geez, they're 47-7, they were ranked 4th going into the conference tourney and they end up 16th!? That's horrible!

I'm still hopeful they can find a way to get into the top 8 and get a super regional, I'm sure the team is kicking themselves for some of the losses to Ohio St., Portland, and some others. I'm more interested in where the team can finish in the RPI than I am getting a conference crown, the goal should be first and foremost getting to Omaha.

Pretty awesome, wish I could have been there this past weekend, sounds like it was a great environment. Going to be interesting to see where the Ducks are ranked. It's a huge win for the quest to hosting a regional. I'm pretty doubtful we can get into the top 8, but I do think we could get a regional.

Yeah...I think Nico can go kick rocks, despicable behavior there.

I don't want to be that guy, but this feels very similar to when they got Ra'heim Moss, Estrada, Zarzuela, the list goes on. A scorer who shot 36% from 3 and 42% overall in a lower level league, does not sound like an impact player at all. I could be wrong, but I'm not exactly overwhelmed with confidence this is the guy to replace Bamba or Key.

I am a bit concerned that we don't seem to get some of the highly rated transfers, definitely going to need at least a guard and another center. Hoping Lindsay and Kobzystyi are going to be impact players and the reason why Cook and Tracey are leaving.

Honestly surprised, felt like with Evans being a former 5 star, not being a starter most of the time, he would have gone to a place where he would be featured more. I'm happy to have him back, I like him as a player. He has a lot to work on though, his jumper, his ball handling, his playmaking. I think he's a good rebounder for his size, but he needs to become more skilled and stronger, hard thing to do.

Right move, he might as well go ahead go through the process some, he might get an indication about where might go in the draft, then he can sit down and make a decision. I think it's 50-50 that he come back. There isn't much chance that he move up considerably next year as opposed to this year, but he might also have more clarity on his NIL deal at Oregon. In the end sometimes guys have just had enough of the college life and want to go on to next phase in their life, you just never know.

Good fight, but pathetic at the line Caleb Love of course decides to have his best game of the year.

Would help if the refs called even one over the back on Zona, basically allowing them to go kamikaze into our big men, we need to be stronger though. Time to bench Barthelemy, he's given us absolutely nothing right now.

Being the Friday guy is significant, it means going best against best. Since the Ducks are almost certainly the class of the B1G, this would be the right move, occasionally you might see a team deliberately withhold their ace in order to try to maximize wins, but the Ducks should be shooting for sweeps instead of 2 out of 3s. I don't think it should be too much of a psychological impact on Grinsell, it's not like he's been amazing in his career, he should understand the situation. His stuff is more like a #2 or even a #3 really on a good team.

Yeah, it's fine, I'm just not that surprised is all I meant. When it came to our losses, I wasn't concerned really. Now for UW I would be a little concerned since they're 9-13, they've probably played a tougher schedule than us, but 9-13 is 9-13, that won't cut it for a team that really should be better. The state of Washington has a lot of good talent, but they can't seem to get it going up there compared to UO and OSU. It's been a bit baffling to me since I would say Washington has more talent overall in the state. They should be better as a program.

Baseball is one of those games where anyone can beat anyone. There are a lot of NWAAC teams that could compete occasionally with D1 programs, Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston which is a NAIA school has had some teams that definitely could have taken a series against a Pac-12 team if they played at their best. All you need is to have your pitcher have a day where they locate, and the hitters have an off-day at the plate.

ACC must be horrendous, I know that UNC took care of business, but a team that only lost twice in the league play got beat decisively and the 3rd place team is now getting boat raced by McNeese.

12-5 is always difficult to predict, seems like there are as many upsets as there are blowouts.

My heart bleeds for you!

Looks like we lucked out for all those who still have to work during the day, 7:10 on Friday, perfect time for me, I always like being the late game during the tournament.

Doubt it will be before noon since it's on the west coast, we'll probably be in the afternoon slot.

He isn't even the best center from the past two years I think personally, I think Dante was better. He was truly dominant last year. Just look how he played against Kalkbrenner from Creighton. I love Bittle this season, but I'll take Dante between the two.

One thing that popped into my head today was imagining where this team would be if the NCAA had done the logical and right thing and given Dante another year. This team would be so much different. We would have dominated the boards today with Bittle and Dante serving as twin towers, depressing to think about since it made no sense whatsoever to deny Dante when others who had the exact same amount of games missed were given extra years. I think Dana is getting a ton out of this team, can't really see them doing any better than they are right now. He's severely limited by the height in the backcourt, and the lack of shooter at the 3. He's coached his butt off this year (like always).

Felt bad for Bittle, played really hard and was consistently let down by his teammates, no shooting, only Evans as another rebounder, just a horrible performance from the guards, but they are limited physically. There are better matchups for us out there among the more elite teams, but this game sort of shows how our upside just isn't there. If Bamba had a shooting season like he had every other season he played we might have that upside to compete, but since he's a zero this season when it comes to outside shooting it really limits us on offense.