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.