Playing UC Irvine in game two of CWS tonight at 8 PM ET/7 CT on ESPN2. Tyler on the hill against lefty Eliot Surrey of UC Irvine. He’s 8-4 with a 1.59 ERA. Tyler 8-7 with a 3.59 ERA. Didn’t have a great start against Stanford, but I love Corbs move of starting Carson on Saturday night and saving Tyler for tonight to take the pressure off Carson and let him relax and just be himself tonight. Won 6-4 over Louisville. Huge win. Dansby Swanson with a huge two run double and Bryan Reynolds with an RBI triple and an amazing catch in left, as he jumped, crashed against the wall and saved at least one run from scoring early in the game. Reynolds, the freshman, is hitting .340. He’s incredible as are all these players. Corbs coached an amazing game Saturday. He made all the right moves that allowed us to win the game. Carson was very good for most of the time and Adam Ravanelle was tremendous closing out the game for us. This Surrey doesn’t throw it hard, but has good stuff, good curve and off speed. Not a flame thrower, but kind of a tricky pitcher, who we’ll have to be ready for. Would be huge to get it done tonight. Weather looks a little shaky with a 40% chance of strong storms at game time, but that was the same forecast for Saturday night and the weather held off. It will be windy, with winds at 25, so there won’t be a lot of long balls. Playing great defense and we can really hit. Just need good pitching and we could do this, but just have to worry about tonight.
Got a commit out of an 85, three-star offensive tackle Ean Pfeifer out of Bentonville, Arkansas. Ean is our fourth commit for 2015. Ean joins four-star db Donovan Sheffield, three star running back Josh Crawford and three star quarterback Kyle Shurmur. Watched film on Ean and he buries people. I see him more like an 87-88, three star. He’s 6’5″, 289 with a chance to be 315 by his redshirt freshman year. He’s a very good football player with great feet, physical and that good mean streak you need out of a lineman. When he blocks people, he puts them in the ground. Watched some excellent film on him. Really like this kid. He brings toughness and blue collar to the line in 2015. That’s what Derek likes. We now have four commits and we just added transfer tight end Davis Dudchock to our team, who just transferred from Stanford. Davis originally committed to us in 2010 with JMatt, Wesley Johnson, Andre Hal and that stellar class, but changed to Stanford during the ’10 season. He is an excellent tight end who was a four-star coming out of Oak Mountain High School in Birmingham. He played in eight games for the Cardinal last year and caught 5 passes for 43 yards, but in his last two years in high school, he caught 59 passes for 863 yards and seven TDs.He is 6’4″, 242, and will be immediately eligible to play. Davis joins tight ends Steven Scheu, Dillon van der Wal, Nathan Marcus, Mack Weaver and true freshman Mitch Parsons in our loaded tight end group. We should be outstanding at tight end. And Derek fully expects transfer Stephen Rivers to be competing with Johnny McCrary, Patton Robinette and the two freshmen, Wade Freeback and Shawn Stankavage, for the starting quarterback job. If we get qb solidified this could be a special season.