I didn’t like what our Vanderbilt Baseball team did this week at Hoover. I Loved it. Big hits from Parker Noland, a long three run shot by Troy LaNeve, and a tremendously clutch three run double by Calvin Hewitt in the bottom of the 8th, coupled with some solid pitching and superior defense, particularly from Jonathan Vastine and Parker Noland, and our Commodores took care of business and captured the SEC Championship with a 10-4 victory over Texas A&M today before 8,728 fans at the Hoover Met.
With the victory, we moved to 41-18 for the season. This team just came into its own at Hoover this week, particularly starting Friday Night against Alabama, then yesterday against the Gators and today over the Aggies.
Just a superior effort by the team. We will be hosting a regional and super regional without a doubt now, and our path to Omaha is better with the Hawk having our backs the next couple of weeks, assuming we can capture the Regional next weekend. Love where this team is at. Very exciting.
It was a nice pitching job by Sam Hliboki, Patrick Reilly, Bryce Cunningham, Thomas Schultz, who was excellent, and Maldo, who finished it off with a game ending 6-3 double play with Vastine and Noland taking care of that, as that was appropriate as both were stellar on defense. Vastine making a couple of superb stops and throws and Noland digging out those throws out of the dirt to secure the outs.
We ended up with 15 hits. Noland was 3 for 5 with 2 runs scored and an RBI, Chris Maldo was 3 for 4 with 2 runs scored. RJ Austin was 2 for 3 with 2 runs scored and an RBI. And LaNeve was 2 for 4 with 3 Ribeyes, including his bomb to right over the trees it looked like. Man, that was a mammoth shot. Love that we have Troy’s bat in the lineup. Calvin’s, too. Could be a super platoon in left. When we face a lefty, we go with Hewitt, and when we face a righty, we go with LaNeve.
EBJ was 2 for 4 with a run scored, an RBI safety squeeze bunt, which was huge, and a long double to deep left central. He later scored on a wild pitch. Bradfield Jr. is our catalyst. Wish he was still a freshman. On the TV show Friday Night Lights, the players on the high school Texas football team would say, “Texas forever,” to each other. With Enrique, I wish we could say, “Freshman forever.” Man does that young man have quite a future in the game. But he first wants to capture a national championship before he starts setting his sights on the Big Leagues.
The pitching was pretty solid. All the guys who pitched had pitched earlier this week, so the arms could have been a little tired. I was most impressed with Schultzie. He’s got the magic back that he had from last year. Thomas can be a tremendous boost to this baseball team in the postseason. Nick got’er done as always. I thought Patrick did some good things. Sam was pretty good, and Bryce didn’t have his best, but we’ll need him going forward. Several wild pitches we need to watch out for, but our staff still was good enough. Today was more about our hitting and our defense. Pitching was fine, thought Schultz was awesome, and Maldo got the key DP to close it out. Hoping Nick gets plenty more opportunities going forward because that means we’ll be leading most likely, and you gotta feel good with Nick coming in for the 9th with a lead. Of course, if Nick didn’t pitch a lot that would be a good thing, too, meaning we might have a big lead and not need him. But, we’ll need Maldo regardless. We need his talent AND his leadership.
Sometimes when a lockdown closer comes in for the 9th and has more than a one or two run lead, he may not be as focused because he really likes the high pressure situations and responds to those situations better. Nick excels when we have to have him. I know he’ll keep doing that.
So now, the Committee will select the top 16 teams that will be hosting their respective regionals. It will be announced at 7:30 ish CT today, in about 5 minutes. D1 Baseball had us at No.6 this morning and comfortably one of the top 8 seeds to host throughout the Regionals/Supers. But they have LSU as a four. I like us to pass over LSU. Clemson is No.5. I’d take a 5 seed and call’er a day. Clemson can have 4, that’s cool. But we should be ahead of LSU. They have Wake Forest at No.1 Florida at No.2, Arkansas at No.3, we should be ahead of them, Clemson at No.4, LSU at No.5, us at No.6, Stanford at No.7 and Virginia at No.8. I like us to be ahead of Arkansas and LSU, since we took 2 out of three from the Hogs last weekend at the Hawk. Clemson won the ACC Championship, so go with 1. Wake, 2. Florida, 3. Clemson and 4. Vanderbilt. That makes sense to me. The Clemson coach is Erik Bakich, who was the great coach at Michigan and a coach under Corbs at VU. Bakich and his Michigan team played us in the MCWS (Men’s College World Series) championship series in 2019, which we won. He’s a class act and a heckuva baseball coach.
So, that’s my take on it. We’ve proven we’re at least a top 4 national seed. But we’ll take it wherever they put us. It would help if we got to the MCWS and had the lowest seed possible for home team purposes. Always like to bat 2nd in an inning. So a 4 over a 6 is preferable for home field in games at Omaha. Nonetheless, what a showing by our team. We won our fourth SEC Championship and we’re cookin going into the NCAA Tournament. I like our chances.
Still gotta stay locked in as we prepare for the Road to Omaha. I’ll send out a quick tweet/email when I find out our seed. Have a great night and rest of your Memorial weekend. Anchor Down!