Forced Game 7 Tonight

Georgia Tech forces Game 7. Everything went our way yesterday as we beat both Elon and Southern Miss to stay alive. Hats off to both Mark Pope and Thomas Nichols as they came in for the early innings and went the distance.

I shouldn't have to tell you this but I'm going to. COME TO THE DAMN GAME! This is the season right here. Win or Go Home.

From Danny Hall:

"I just want to start out first thanking the fans who did show up (Sunday). I hope that they’ll go home and tell their friends what great play they saw out of the Yellow Jackets, and maybe tomorrow night.....we’ll have more fans rooting for Georgia Tech than Southern Miss had rooting for their team since we’re hosting this Regional."

Too many fans decided to give up after 1 bad game. Come back out and support the team

First pitch is 7pm at Russ Chandler Stadium

Go Jackets!

8:04 AM: Kind of a surprising move but Deck McGuire will start tonight.

Baseball Today!

The new season begins today.

The Jackets get the prime time match-up facing cross-town foe Georgia State at 7pm. The Panthers split the series with us (Winning 10-1 and losing 18-2) but we didn't use our weekend starters and I would assume they didn't play their best as well judging from the scores.

Recently honored 1st Team All-American Deck McGuire looks to take the mound and get us off to a good start. Lord know we're gonna need everything he has as we tend to struggle in series after he pitches.

Before our game gets underway, Elon and Southern Miss. square off at 3pm. I think a lot of people are pretty confident with our chances in the first round (myself included). But we should NOT overlook Elon. The Phoenix is a very offensive-minded team. They average 10.4 runs per game, and lead the nation in home runs, and homers per game. If we have to depend on a slugfest to win a game, Elon has the capability to hang around.

Links:
The College Baseball Blog's preview of Atlanta
The College Baseball Blog's preview of Gainesville
Southeast Baseball simulates our regional.

Weekend Diamond Reports

Yes everyone, I am alive. I didn't die or get brutally injured. I was just finishing up my finals. Major thanks to Bird for keeping things going. Now on to the important stuff.

Softball:

The GT Softball team finished up a rain shortened series with a 2-game sweep over Maryland in College Park on Saturday. The wins solidify the #1 seed for the ACC Tournament and they will face Virginia starting May 8th in Raleigh.
Note: It's a single elimination tournament so it's literally "Win or Go Home. Go Jackets!

Here is how dominant our softball team has been this year:

Georgia Tech now concludes the regular season having won 13 straight league games and was victorious in all seven ACC series' in 2009 and 10 in a row dating back to last year. Overall, the Yellow Jackets have won 14 of their last 17 games heading into the postseason.

Baseball:

It was a warm-up weekend for the baseball team as the Jackets swept Presbyterian. Sunday was an unleashing of runs as the final score was 23-2. Biggest scare came on Saturday when we needed Jeff Rowland to hit the walk-off home run.

The weekend brought a few changes to the ACC as not everyone played teams like Presbyterian. FSU swept Virginia Tech and took complete control of the Atlantic Divison. The Seminoles have now won 12 in a row and they come to Atlanta this upcoming weekend to end the conference season and to solidify seedings for the tournament. Coastal leader North Carolina has the weekend off.

Current ACC Standings:

ATLANTIC DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
Florida State	18-7-0	.720	33-12-0	.733
Clemson	16-11-0	.593	32-16-0	.667
Boston College	12-13-0	.480	29-19-0	.604
NC State	8-16-0	.333	22-26-0	.458
Maryland	7-20-0	.259	23-26-0	.469
Wake Forest	6-18-0	.250	21-24-0	.467
COASTAL DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
North Carolina	16-7-0	.696	35-11-0	.761
Georgia Tech	14-7-1	.659	31-11-1	.733
Virginia	13-8-1	.614	35-9-1	.789
Miami	15-12-0	.556	31-16-0	.660
Duke	12-12-0	.500	29-17-0	.630
Virginia Tech	10-16-0	.385	27-20-0	.57

Once again, it's gonna be a huge upcoming weekend.....

Baseball Sweeps, Thank GOD

Wake Forest came up on the schedule at the perfect time this past weekend. The 'Deacs were outscored 27-3 over the weekend and got swept.

So, what does this mean? Well in the polls, we moved up. Now we're at #7 in ESPN poll and #7 in the Baseball America poll. But the polls don't matter. There is a legit NCAA Tournament at the end of the season, and I just want to see us host the Regionals and the Super Regionals. Baseball America has an early look on the NCAA Tournament. (created before this past weekend).

We also have taken more than a 1 game lead on the ACC Coastal Division and have claimed the best record in the ACC.

ATLANTIC DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
Florida State	12-7-0	.632	25-12-0	.676
Clemson	12-9-0	.571	26-14-0	.650
Boston College	10-9-0	.526	24-15-0	.615
NC State	7-14-0	.333	19-21-0	.475
Wake Forest	6-15-0	.286	20-19-0	.513
Maryland	6-15-0	.286	18-21-0	.462
COASTAL DIVISION
School	Conference	Pct.	Overall	Pct.
Georgia Tech	13-5-1	.711	26-8-1	.757
North Carolina	13-7-0	.650	31-10-0	.756
Virginia	11-7-1	.605	30-8-1	.782
Miami	11-10-0	.524	26-13-0	.667
Duke	10-11-0	.476	27-15-0	.643
Virginia Tech	9-11-0	.450	24-13-0	.649

I really don't know how we are doing it. We have had to deal with inconsistency a lot over the year, but I'm not going to ask any questions.

Next up is (another) big series against Clemson AT Clemson. This series is always huge and Clemson fans know how to be loud at baseball games. It should be a good one.

Wednesday News Flash: Suck it Mutts!

• You can't beat us this year. Football, baseball, basketball. The sweet smell of victory! Softball is the only "major" sport you can talk about right now.
  

• Rumors are spreading that the AJC/Cox Media is cutting more writers/ columnists from their staff. That includes the likes of Terrence Moore, and the GT beat writers Larry Harstein and Ken Suguira. There is absolutely no love lost between me and Terrence Moore. He can fall off a cliff for all I care. As for Larry and Ken, they were decent enough and brought up discussion points, so good luck to them both.

• The AJC cutting writers is all the more reason to follow Coley Harvey at the Macon Telegraph. He goes above and beyond and is making the extra effort to draw readers and followers into his section of the newspaper. Follow Coley Harvey.

• A bash against Paul Hewitt?? It's not the first time people question him about player development. This is a report on Alade Aminu's performance at the Portsmouth Invitational. Specifically:

  Comparing the way Aminu played at Portsmouth with what we can now see from his film at Georgia Tech reveals a pretty stark contrast—it doesn’t seem like he was utilized very well at all in college from what we can tell. Aminu was an absolute devastating force as a pick and roll finisher for his Norfolk Naval Shipyard team—thanks to his tremendous combination of size, length, terrific hands and excellent mobility. At Georgia Tech he was barely used in this fashion at all—just 4.3% of his offensive possessions came on the pick and roll. They looked incredibly disorganized in the film we took in, with no point guard, no system, and very little ball-movement. It appeared that Aminu often was asked to play very far from the basket, and pretty much all of his shots were opportunities that he was forced to create on his own.

A Travel Curfew? WTF?

Absolutely nothing got accomplished this past weekend as the Jackets literally tied the entire series. GT won Friday/ Saturday (rain delay), lost Saturday evening, and tied, yes tied Sunday afternoon. Why was the game not finished? Because someone high up somewhere deems is necessary to give a travel curfew to collegiate teams. WTF. I don't know if this is an ACC rule or a UVA rule. It seems like a UVA rule. Something about it just reeks of a gross mix of sportscoat, necktie, and snob.

"We feel like we wasted some opportunities this weekend, but Virginia is a very good team" was the quote from Danny Hall after the game this weekend. Basically we played like we've always played. We beat the teams we are supposed to but canNOT take care of business against the teams we HAVE to beat.

So where does this weekend put us? Still at the top. The shuffle all stayed below us. Here are the current Coastal Standings:

1. Georgia Tech 10-5-1 in conference
2. Miami 11-7 in conference
3. Virginia 9-6-1 in conference
4. UNC 10-7 in conference

Next ACC Series is @ Wake Forest this upcoming weekend

Beesball Sweeps

Traveling backwards....

Sunday finished off a warm welcoming weekend into the ACC Season as the Yellow Jackets finished off and swept the Terps 10-7. Big props to Chase Burnett as he broke the 7-7 tie in the 8th inning with a huge 3-run go ahead bomb. However, the game was pretty sloppy as Maryland committed 3 erros and Tech committed 1 but easily could have been given 1 or 2 more.

Saturday was a massacre. 24-3. 24 runs are the most runs scored in an ACC game since GT beat Virginia 27-2. How can you NOT like aluminum bats in the college game?!
Friday was a solid pitching performance by Deck McGuire as he shut the Terps down.

Some key things to look at and think about:

• We are still very inconsistent offensively although I like seeing some flashes of "small ball" being played this year.
  
• If Maryland put up a decent fight in 2 of 3 games, the ACC season will be tough. Bring it on.
  
• Relief pitching is shaky. Too many walks......
  
• Matt Skole is freaking legit.
  

Next Game: vs. Mercer, March 10 @ 4pm

Tuesday News Musings

Football

Spring practice doesn't start until after Spring Break but conditioning for the Yellow Jackets has begun, the same conditioning that laid the foundation for us being one of the least tired units in the 4th quarter. All information and photos is thanks to Ken Sugiura.

Jon "Diesel" Dwyer workin' hard

So, here are two of the more difficult drills. You can read them all at the original link above. How would you fare and when would you pass out? Oh yeah, you are also getting yelled at by Paul Johnson.

• Pro agility drill

Players start in a three-point stance. Depending on which direction the coach commands, they sprint five yards left or right, touch the ground, then go 10 yards in the other direction, touch the ground and run back five yards to the starting point.

• Towel drill

Four towels are placed in a square about five yards apart. The players start at one square, place their hand on the towel and, with all their weight on one hand, circle the towel, get up, sprint to the next and do likewise at each corner of the square.

Austin Barrick says: “By far the hardest, especially for [offensive] linemen. You’re supporting your body weight with one arm and you’ve got to bend down and a couple of us have got some bellies. We’ve got to bend over that and spin around. Your legs burn, your back gets tired from bending over. It’s really tiring.”

Thanks for the report Ken.

Basketball

The season has been rough. The season has been long and pretty much unbearable. However, tomorrow is Senior Night. Come to the AMC to show your appreciation. Also, the ACC Tournament starts next week. Plan on us playing the 5/12 game next Thursday at 2pm.

Baseball

The multitude of polls have been released, and Tech is scattered among the rankings. Baseball America has the Jackets at #18. While the NCBWA has us ranked at #10

Beesball kicks off the ACC season this weekend as they host lowly Maryland. The Terps currently own the worst record in the conference at 4-4. The UM student newspaper delves deeper into the woes of Maryland baseball.

A 'Boro Series Split and Thursday News Musings

The Yellow Jackets righted the ship yesterday. Starter Kevin Jacob and (my favorite) freshman Matt Skole continued to make his presence felt as he drove in 3 runs on the night. Here's the GSU perspective. For the weekend Skole went 3-8 with 4 RBI's. On the season Matt is hitting .400 (2nd highest on the team). What can I say? He's a badass. And he's younger than me . Dammit.

The President has arrived! President George "Bud" Peterson has arrive on campus and met the Ramblin' Reck yesterday. He was quickly informed of the fact that there has been one and only one Ramblin' Reck to which he seemed pleased. He also received his own personal copy of the T-Book.

Basketball

Yes, the season is still going. Terrence Moore writes the stereotypical article saying something along the lines of Hewitt isn't finished yet or whatnot. However, I find this quote that I find quite poignant.

Which brings us to the final reason for that light. Added Hewitt, “I’ve recruited more now this year than I ever have during the season. You’re trying to offset the possibility of this ever happening again.”

Well where the hell have you been Paul?! Bobby Cremins once said that his biggest mistake was NOT preparing for Stephon Marbury leaving early and how he TOLD YOU THAT. Did you not learn from that past?

Football

We'll end this on a good note. Larry Harstein has a Q&A with Morgan Burnett here. Enjoy it.

Baseball falls in the 'Boro 6-5

Goodbye sweet undefeated season. You were beautiful while you lasted.

Thomas Nichols couldn't shut the door in the 7th inning as he gave up the Eagles first lead of the game. The Jackets play again tonight @ Georgia Southern. First pitch is 4pm and you can listen to the game on WREK radio.

More analysis after the series.

Happy Opening Weekend

Baseball is back!

10 Reasons to visit the Rusty-C

Gametimes, Projected Starters, and lineups

Beesball on the horizon

It is now T-9 days and counting until we hear the first official *ping* of the season. The anticipation continues to build as you hear the noise and see the team practicing as you have to trudge to class. (Why can't I be that good?). It will be nice to be the favorite in a sporting event again. Basketball is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

We open the season where we left it, playing Lipscomb University, a team that we faced in the Athens Regional of the NCAA Tournament last June. The Bison proved to be a scrappy bunch as they beat the Mutts in the first round, but their lack of depth proved to be too much for them by the end of the weekend.

Let's look at some important games on the schedule:

2/20-2/22: vs. Lipscomb: Opening Weekend! That means when the sun goes down, it's gonna be cold.

2/24-2/25, 4/7-4/8: vs. Georgia Southern: I hate losing to any in-state school in baseball.

3/24: vs. Georgia State: Same as above

3/25,4/14, and 5/12: vs. Georgie: Same as above + We really really hate Georgie. Piss on 'Em!

3/27-3/29: @ Miami: Stick it to Jim Morris plus Miami is one of the teams we must beat to take the conference.

4/03-4/05: vs UNC: Back-to-back must win weekends. This series being in Atlanta could make the difference.

4/24-4/26: @ Clemson: Not only is it finals week, it's also a fantastic roadtrip weekend. Plus, this series is always heated.

5/08-5/09: vs. Florida State: Home Series. This is incredibly important. Close to the end of the season. Huge Series. Selection Committee watching. Florida State baseball. Enough said.

Looking forward, these series are the most crucial in the season. The early, non-conference games, mainly for pride, but nonetheless, important. To be the big dog, we gotta beat the big dogs and lately Miami, Florida State, and UNC have proven themselves.