We play the Radford, out of Radford, Virginia in south central Virginia, –Indiana winner at 7 PM CT/8 PM ET in ESPN3 and the vucommodores.com website is reporting the game will be on the SEC Network. Radford is leading the Hoosiers 2-0 in the bottom of the third. Walker Buehler will pitch for us. Walker is 3-2 with a 3.18 ERA. He has struck out 74 and walked 24. Opponents are hitting .270 against him and he’s given up five homers in 13 starts and 73.2 innings. Need a good showing out of Walker.
Lost in Dansby’s epic two run homer last night was the pitching of Phil Pfeifer, Ben Bowden and Kyle Wright. Even though Phil struggled at the beginning, he really settled down and ended up striking out 10 and walking only 1 and striking out 10. He pitched six inning, and gave up four earned on five hits with three of them coming in the first two innings. Phil threw 104 pitches with 62 of them for strikes, and 42 balls. He was bringing it in the first inning, his fastball was hitting 95. He may have been even a little too amped up at the beginning, but he really settled down and pitched well after the second.  He was throwing it about 92-93 from the third inning on and using more off speed; his curve was effective.Phil now has 101 strikeouts against 37 walks  His ERA is now 4.21, but his last two performances against Alabama in the SEC tourney and last night against Indiana have been very impressive That’s very good timing by Phil We now know we can rely on him.

Ben pitched two scoreless innings giving up only one hit with a walk and 4 K’s. Ben brings it 94-95. He has awesome heat. Kyle Wright pitched a perfect ninth getting Indiana out 1-2-3 with a huge assist from Dans on the first out. Dansby’s play was really a Derek Jeter-like play as he ranged deep into basically left field, jumped and threw a strike to Zander for the first out. It was incredible. Dans, to me, solidified his No.1 draft selection with that play after his dramatic two run homer in the top of the ninth. The Arizona Dbacks have the first pick a week from tomorrow, Monday, June 8th. Dansby’s two-run shot was his 14th of the season and his 59th and 60th steaks. It’s amazing that he wasn’t first team All-SEC and first team All-American. Alex Bregman of LSU got the nod over Dans, and LSU did win the regular season in the conference, and Bregman is outstanding,too, but the good news is it made Dans mad and he’s taking it out on our postseason opponents. If Dansby keeps this up he will be the No.1 pick, hopefully leading our team to its second national championship in a row. Really like the way our team is playing. One other thing I forgot to mention last night was Bryan Reynolds terrific catch in right central as Bryan dove and caught a ball that looked like it could have been a triple of even worse. It was as impressive as Dans’s play. Bryan is outstanding in center field.

Brandt shot a 64 today, -5, par 69 because of rain, and birdied 18 from four feet to finish it off at the AT&T Byron Nelson in Irving, Texas. Brandt finished at -12, and is presently tied for 6th. Steven Bowditch has a four shot lead at -18 through 17 holes and looks like he’ll win it. He’s been awesome today. He’s a Dallas resident and was born in Australia. He’s 31 years old.  He will be 32 next Monday. Brandt is not playing next week at the Memorial, Jack’s tourney, but will be in the field for the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis, June 11-14th, then comes the United States Open at Chambers Bay Golf Club ( University Place, Washington state), June 18th-21st. This is setting up pretty well for Brandt and the U.S.

Jon Curran shot 67, 63, 67, 68, to finish -12 and tied with Brandt for sixth. Great showing by JC. He is an alternate at present in the Memorial and is the ninth alternate at present, so hopefully JC can get a shot next week. Jon will have to win next week at Jack’s tourney, if he can get in, or the following week at the FedEx, to get in the U.S. Open. But he’s playing extremely well right now. Really proud of him.

Our golf team is now in fifth place at the NCAA championships. We are at +( overall and even for the day. We are on the 16-18th holes. We have really come on this round. We were something like +7 on the front side today, but have really put it together on the back. Hunter Steward has birdied 12,13, 15 and 16 and is currently on 17 after shooting +4 on the front. Zzck Jaworski, Jaws as he’s called by his teammates and coach Scott Limbaugh, has three birdies on 13, 14 and 16 respectively. Jaws is currently on 18. So we’re in good shape as we finish up the third round and head into the fourth round tomorrow. The top eight teams after tomorrow’s final round of stroke play, play for the national championship in match play on Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday’s final match will decide which team wins the national title between two teams. Southern Cal leads at -1 overall, Georgia is second at +1, Illinois is third @ +6, and LSU is fourth at +&. LSU is playing with us.  South Florida and UCLA are tied for sixth at +14. UCLA is finished and South Florida is on 16-18. So good stuff for the team.

Bowditch wins the Nelson with a final round 64. He played flawless golf. Brandt and JC finish tied sixth. Luke List didn’t make the cut this week on the web.com tour at the Rex Hospital Open in Raleigh, N.C., but Luke is in the field at the Greater Dallas Open next week starting Thursday.

Indiana has just tied Radford, 3-3, in the top of the fifth. Illinois, whom we’d play at if they win their regional and we win ours, is leading Notre Dame 3-0 in the top of the eighth. They are behind because of rain outs yesterday, so if the Illini wins this game, they would play again tomorrow afternoon against the Notre Dame- Wright State winner. We would travel to Champaign, Illinois if both of us won our regionals as Illinois was a top eight national seed.

Will have more later on baseball and how the golf team finished. The golf team is now tied for fourth with Illinois at +*, only one shot behind third place LSU. We are on holes 17 and 18.

David Price on the hill tonight vs.  the LA Angels at LA. First pitch is @ 7 PM CT/8 PM ET on ESPN. David is 4-1 with a 2.97 ERA. DP is facing Matt Shoemaker of the Angels. Shoemaker is 3-4 with a 5.44 ERA.

Pedro and the Pirates play at the Padres at 8:10 PM ET/7:10 PM CT. Pirates are 26-23 and 6 1/2 back of the Cardinals, which won today over the Dodgers, 3-1. The Pirates won 5-2 last night over the Pods. Pedro went 1 for 3, a double, and scored a run. He is now hitting .248 with nine homers and 25 ribbies.

Note*** We finished -1 today and +* for the tournament, good for fifth place, one shot back of LSU, which is finished and in fourth at +7. South Florida and Texas are tied for sixth at +13. USF is done and the Horns are on 11-15.

That’s the Vanderbilt baseball team we’ve been expecting to see all season. We’ve had the talent all year, now our talent is starting to hit their stride after last night’s 9-1 thrashing of Lipscomb before a sellout of 3,626 fans at the Hawk. Our team moved to 43-19 and will now face No.3 seed Indiana (35-22)  which defeated Radford, 7-1 yesterday afternoon in the first game. Lefty Phil Pfeifer (4-4, 4.06 ERA) will be on the hill for us against Christian Morris of Indiana. Morris, a right hander, was 5-1 this year with a 5.18 ERA. Game time is 7 PM CT/8 PM ET on ESPN 3 and the SEC Network may show most of the game, too.
Ro Coleman reached base all five times going three for three with a walk and a hit by pitch. Ro was awesome. Will Toffey was two for five and had a clutch single to drive in a pair in the bottom of the fifth. Bryan Reynolds looks like he has that prolific bat back as he went three for five with an RBI and Jeren Kendall was two for four including his sixth homer of the season. We now have 9 home runs in the postseason as we hit eight last week in Hoover at the SEC tourney. We have 58 homers this season compared to 22 all last season.

Carson was phenomenal. He went seven, gave up only four hits, walked three and rang up 11. His fastball was hitting 95-96 and his curve ball was just filthy good. Carson is totally back. So proud for him. He threw 106, 66 for strikes and 40 balls. He was awesome. Collin Snider came in and gave us two excellent innings in relief. Collin gave up one hit, but that was it. He pitched very well which is a good sign going forward. Collin can certainly help us out of the pen with the other guys we have Bowden, Sheffield, Wright, Kilichowski, and others. Of course, those latter three may be starting for us some.

Excellent work by the team.

Sonny was exceptional once again leading his Oakland A’s over the Yankees for the second straight night, 6-2. A’s playing a lot better. This is more like the team I expected to see at the beginning of the year after they had the best record in baseball in spring training. They’re getting some guys back healthy, and starting to play A’s baseball with excellent pitching, outstanding defense and timely hitting. Sonny pitched eight, gave up only four hits, two earned, with two walks and five K’s. He gave up a homer to Brian McCann a solo shot, but battled like he always does. Sonny threw 101 pitches, 67 for strikes and 34 balls. His fastball was hitting 94-95 and sometimes 96. His curve ball was Sonny-like which is almost impossible to hit. It’s an incredible weapon. As go as far to say as Sonny has the best curve in baseball. Sonny moved to 6-2 with a 1.82 ERA. He’s becoming a legend in the Majors this season. The A’s moved to 19-32 and are 12 back of the Astros. The Stros lost to the White Sox last night 6-3. The A’s have won five of their last seven, so it’s trending in the right direction. The A’s first baseman Steven Vogt is a 31 year old veteran who makes $500,000 a year and loves the game of baseball. He truly plays for the love of the game and his passion to win. He made some amazing plays scooping balls at first, and was two for three with two Ribeyes. and is now hitting .324 on the season. He’s an awesome guy. A’s have that kind of player throughout their group. They remind me of the Rays when DP was there. Just a lot of passion to play the game for not the high priced money that a lot of players on big market teams make. It’s pretty awesome.

DP pitches tomorrow night at the LA Angels at 7 PM CT/8PM ET on the Deuce-ESPN2. David 4-1 with a 2.97 ERA, 14 walks, 57 K’s and a 1.17 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) which is an excellent number. David faces Matt Shoemaker (3-4, 5.44). The Tigers lost to the Angels, 2-0, last night and dropped to 28-22 on the season, 2.5 back of the KC Royals. The Twins are one back.

Pedro and the Bucs lost last night to the Padres in San Diego, 6-2, but El Toro was two for four with two steaks. Dro is now hitting .247 with nine deep ones and 25 steaks. He’s been hitting very well lately. Bucs saw their seven game winning streak snapped, but they’re still 25-23 and seven back of the Cards, who are 32-16. Cards playing exceptionally well. Pirates a 1/2 game back of the Cubs who are 25-22.

Ryan Flaherty came off the DL this week and is back at second for the O’s. Ryan was 0 for two last night but had a walk and the Birds beat the Rays, 2-1 on a walk off single by J.J. Hardy. Ryan now hitting .244, and it’s good to see him back in the lineup. Orioles now 23-24, one game back of the 25-24 Yankees. Like to see Ryan get that bat really going.

Jon Curran tied for the lead heading into today’s AT&T Byron Nelson. JC at -9. They have really been battered by the rain in Dallas, Houston and throughout Texas. Hopefully it’ll let up and the people in Texas can get back to some normalcy. Golf is delayed right now, but the outlook for the rest of the day looks better and tomorrow is sunny, so they should be able to get it in. Brandt at -2, after shooting a 3 under 66 yesterday. They’re playing the short par 4 14th as a par 3 after all the rain, so the course is playing Par 69.

Our men’s golf team is making some noise at the NCAA tournament. We are +10 and -3 for the day on holes 13-15. We are presently tied for 12th. Will need to get in the top eight after three rounds to qualify for the match play I think. I’m going to check on that and get back to you on it. Playing well today, so we’ve got some momentum going.

Finally, I’m going to really miss my Dai-Jon. Loved him at VU. It’s so hard to see a vibrant, happy young man lose his life. The Lord called him home Thursday and he’s safe and happy and in a better place than anyone can imagine. Will miss you DJP. We’ll win multiple national titles for you. Love you man.

David Price went seven against the A’s allowed five hits, no runs with one walk and three ring ups. David and the Tigers defeated the A’s 1-0. David was throwing the heater at 93-94 and 95 a couple of times and threw some nice breaking balls at key times. He had some trouble but got out of all of the jams he got himself in. David improved to 4-1 on the season with a 2.97 ERA, a 1.17 WHIP (walk and hits per innings pitched, very good number for Dave) and has 14 walks and 57 strikeouts on the year. David has 1,204 strikeouts in nine years of pitching, an average of 133 K’s per year, and his first year with the Rays, the tail end of 2007, he was a closer.
The Tigers are now 28-21 and two and a half game back of the AL Central division leading Minnesota Twins and KC Royals, which are at 28-18.

Sonny on the hill for the A’s tonight vs the Yankees at O.co. Coliseum in Oakland. Sonny is 5-2 with a 1.77 ERA, 18 walks and 61 K’s. He faces Chris Capuano of the Yankees, who is 0-2 with a 7.36 ERA.

Pedro and the Pirates are on fire. The Pirates have won seven in a row and Pedro is hitting better. The Pirates are now 25-22, six back of the division leading Cardinals, which are at 31-16. The second place Cubs are at 25-21.

Festus Ezeli finished the clinching game for the Warriors over the Rockets to send them into the Finals versus the Cavs with 12 points and nine boards and played some pretty good defense against Dwight Howard, who finished with 18 points and 16 boards, but was five of 13 from the field, so not a great percentage for a center who is taking high percentage shots. Fes looks like he’s in Steve Kerr’s plans for the NBA finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The series start next Thursday, June 4th, @ 8 PM CT/ 9 PM ET on ABC. Like the Warriors over LeBron and the Cavs in 7.

Our baseball team has been inconsistent this year.. We haven’t shown that we have a solid 1-2-3 starting pitching rotation and now we’ll need solid day four and five pitchers. Our defense has been pretty good, but our hitting with runners in scoring position has been erratic. But we kind of limped into the postseason last year and won it all, so this is doable again, possibly. We are the  No.1 seed in our regional this weekend with our first game against Lipscomb, which beat us in the regular season 3-1, slated for a 7 PM CT/8 PM ET first pitch on ESPN3. We finished the season 42-19, No.2 seed Radford finished 43-14 and won the Big South. Nop.3 Indiana, the number three seed, is 34-22, and Lipscomb is 39-18.  Radford and Indiana square off 2 PM CT/ 3 PM ET on ESPN3.

We’ll need to get good pitching from Carson, Walker and Pfeifer and guys like Kilichowski and Kyle Wright will need to pitch like they did last weekend at the SEC tournament where they were both terrific. If we can get good pitching and we hit in the clutch, we have a good chance to advance to the super regional, where, if Illinois were to win their regional, we would go to the Illini. If some other team defeats Illinois at their regional, we would host the Super Regional.

This is a special group of Vanderbilt women’s tennis players and their coach, Geoff McDonald is a champion. The girls defeated No.1 ranked USC last night 4-0 to advance to the national championship match today vs UCLA at the Hurd Tennis Center in Waco, Texas. We won two doubles matches and three singles matches for the victory. This is the second time McDonald has taken our girls team to the national championship match. The first time in 2001, we lost to Stanford in the championship finals. McDonald is in his 22nd season and he has taken the girls to 21 straight NCAA tournaments. This is the first Final Four for the girls since 2004. But what a job Geoff has done. UCLA is the defending national champion and defeated Georgia last night 4-1. We lost to Georgia @ Athens on March 15th, 5-2, but defeated them in the SEC tournament, 4-3 on the way to capturing the SEC crown.

Tonight’s coverage can be seen live on the vucommodores.com site. The match starts at 5 PM CT/6 PM ET in Waco. Just go to the women’s tennis schedule and click on the Watch link and it will take you to the live feed of each match. The doubles will start first. There is an option of about six or seven courts to click on per the website to watch different matches.

No. 20 (nationally) Courtney Colton and Sydney Campbell defeated #24 Zoe Katz and Sabrina Santamaria, 8-2, to capture the doubles point. It’s kind of a race to finish first in singles and doubles as the first team to 4 points wins. Also, our No.18 team Ashley Antal and Astra Sharma defeated No.19 Giuliana Olmos and Zoe Scandalis of USC, 8-6. Marie Casares and Frances Altick were down 6-5 in their match, but didn’t need to finish.

In singles, Sharma, ranked No.42, playing at No.2,  and playing incredible tennis, defeated No.14 Guiliana Olmos, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2. Altick, playing at the No.3 singles and ranked 96th, defeated Scandalis, 6-2, 6-2 in an awesome performance. Courtney Colton won at No.4 singles (ranked No. 61) over #57 Madison Westby, 6-1, 6-2. Caseres and Antal had split sets at No.s 5 and 6 respectively and didn’t have to finish. Our No.1 player, Sydney, who is ranked No.8 in the country, split sets as well, and was up 5-4 in the third when we closed out the match.

Geoff said this is an incredible group of young ladies. They were 4-4 on February 15th and Geoff thought maybe he had over scheduled them with difficult opponents. But it has paid off as we are tournament tough. UCLA has a lot of experience and it’ll be a major challenge, but I believe in our girls. See them getting it done 4-3 and capturing the third national championship in our sports program’s history with baseball last year and the women’s bowling team in 2007. Would be really terrific for the girls. Will have a full report tomorrow.

Baseball plays tomorrow (Wednesday) 30 minutes after the first game, probably around 1 PM against the winner of the Missouri-South Carolina game today at about 1 PM. The SEC Network will televise the game.

Carson won the Triple Crown in pitching this year with an 11-1 record, most wins in the conference, a 1.51 ERA, best in the SEC, and 132 strikeouts in 95.2 innings. He’s the fourth pitcher in SEC history to do that. The last one was from Tennessee in 2005. The other three are on my regular blog if you want to look them up. Carson was selected SEC pitcher of the year which was a no doubt choice. Somewhat surprisingly, Dansby was not selected first team All-SEC at shortstop. Alex Bregman of LSU was. Bregman is really good, they had similar stats, and LSU did win the conference, so it does make sense. I do think that will motivate Dans even more in this tournament, so that’s kind of a good thing.

Can we win this tournament? Without a doubt. What will it take? We have to get our other starters besides Carson to give us some great innings, at least six or seven. I feel pretty good about our bullpen. We’ve started to solidify things and we have six or seven guys we can count on in relief. Two guys who really need to step up to the mound and deliver are Philip Pfeifer and Jordan Sheffield. Philip will probably start one game in this series and he’s going to have to throw strikes and locate better than he has been. He’s got excellent stuff, he just really needs to bare down and deliver. Jordan also needs to give us good work out of the bullpen. He’s got great stuff, but it’s the same with Jrodan as it is with Philip. Time for them to step up their games. And we’ve got to hit better with runners in scoring position. We haven’t been as clutch towards the end of the season with the bats. We need to start hitting in the clutch now. If we make it to the championship game, we could very well get a top eight national seed in the NCAA tournament, which would give us home field for the regional and the Super regional, which would be huge. If we don’t we could get left out of the national seeding and have to travel for the regional. Last year we went to Indiana and got it done at the regional and then beat Stanford at home to make it to the CWS where we won the national title. It’s possible to do it if we don’t get the national seed, but it’ll make it harder. As Corbs likes to say, we just need to focus on today and tomorrow and get ready to go to work.

DP pitched on Saturday and the Tigers won 4-3, though DP was not involved in the decision. He pitched pretty well overall as his team defeated the Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. David threw 6.2 innings, giving up seven hits, three runs, all three on homers on his change up, with two walks and nine K’s. David threw 117 pitches,  with 80 strikes and 37 balls. I thought he pitched pretty well overall except for the home runs. His fastball was hitting 94, 95, and 96, but they did get to his change up. Still a solid performance by David. David now 3-1 with a 3.40 ERA and 42 K’s in 53 innings. David has only walked 12. He’s given up 6 homers. He has been doing great in that department; just had a rough one with that on Saturday. But overall, it was a solid performance, and Miggie Cabrera, the Tigers first baseman, hit his 400th home run at age 32. This guy is historically good.

David’s next outing is Thursday vs. the Astros. The Astros are 25-14 this season, amazing stuff from the ‘Stros. David will face Scott Feldman (3-4, 5.06), who won his last outing over Toronto, 6-5, giving up three runs on five hits with three walks and 10 K’s. The Tigers now 23-16, 1.5 games back of the 24-14 Royals.

Sonny pitched a good game last Thursday against the Red Sox, but took the loss, 2-0. Sonny went seven, allowed only three hits with zero walks and nine K’s. He threw 99 pitches with 64 for strikes and 35 balls. It was a pretty masterful performance, but he had no help. Sonny’s fastball was hitting 93-94 and 95, and his breaking stuff was awesome as usual. His breaking ball is the best in the big leagues, and he’s helped David with breaking stuff and David can really throw a curve now. Sonny is now 4-1 with a 1.61 ERA. In 56 innings, he’s walked 15 and struck out 53, and has given up only one homer. When I say his curve is good, it’s the best curve ball in the game and could be historically good throughout Sonny’s career, and he’s got a long career ahead of him. Mix that in with a 94 MPH fastball, and excellent slider and a pretty good change and Sonny has a chance to be in the Cy Young conversation at the end of the season along with David and the great King Felix Hernandez. The problem is the A’s have been pretty bad this year. They are 1-12 in one run games and stand at 14-26, but they did defeat the division leading Astros last night, 2-1, so that’s a start. They are at Houston and Sonny is on the hill tonight @ 7: 05 PM CT/8:05 PM ET facing Roberto Hernandez of the ‘Stros. Hernandez is a 34 year old veteran, who’s always had good stuff. He’s 1-3 this season with a 4.12 ERA with 12 walks and 20 K’s in 43.2 innings. So this is an opportunity for Sonny and the A’s to keep climbing the ladder. The A’s have a lot of work ahead of them as they are 11.5 back of the Astros, so they’ve just got to take it a day at a time and be the best they can be today. They’ll wrap up the series with Houston tomorrow afternoon.

Will have the girls results on the blog tomorrow along with Sonny’s results and anything on our baseball team heading into their first round game vs. SC/Missouri winner. We lost two out of three to South Carolina on the road about a month ago and swept Missouri at home about three weeks ago.