Though all eight qualifying SEC Baseball Tournament teams advanced into the 2009 NCAA Regional postseason anyway, the supposedly irrelevant league tournament seldom has seemed more relevant.
At least to the two teams igniting from that SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. all the way to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
Eschewing the myth that the SEC regular season champ stands better off to play just a few games in the double-elimination league tournament then exit by the weekend to refresh for ensuing NCAA Regionals, the LSU Tigers won it all in Hoover. They have been winning it all ever since. They swept their Regional and Super Regional in Baton Rouge and in Omaha swept their four-team College World Series bracket going into Monday night’s start of the best 2 out of 3 for the national championship against Texas.
Texas is the unbeaten winner of the other CWS four-team bracket.
The Arkansas Razorbacks, the SEC’s other College World Series team, likely owe their Omaha existence to the SEC Tournament.
Without their 2-2 SEC Tournament bridging a regular-season ending eight straight SEC defeats, it’s hard to fathom the Hogs catching fire like they did postseason. Starting with a nine-run eighth-inning to overcome first-round foe Washington State, 10-3, the Razorbacks won the Norman Regional, including two wins over favored host Oklahoma, swept favored Florida State in the Super Regional at the Seminoles’ Dick Howser Stadium in Tallahassee, and then in Omaha stunned favored Cal State-Fullerton, 10-6 and won a thrilling 4-3 12-inning epic with Virginia.
Who knows? Perhaps if not bracketed with LSU, simply better than these Hogs as LSU proved with 9-1 and 14-5 beatings in Omaha after beating them 2 of 3 in Fayetteville, Arkansas might be the team this week playing LSU for the national championship.
Texas is awfully good, but those were awfully good Cal State-Fullerton and Virginia teams the Hogs beat in Omaha not to mention going 2-0 against OU in Norman and 2-0 against Florida State in Tallahassee.
The Arkansas team that embarrassed itself swept at home in its final regular-season 3-game series against Ole Miss, the last two losses were 9-3 and 16-3 surrenders, was not the same inspired team storming out of Hoover.
Arkansas did lose its last SEC Tournament game 11-1 to Vanderbilt. However that game, like when the Hogs got eliminated 14-5 by LSU last Friday in the bracket final, Arkansas ran out of pitching, not moxie.
Those 8-5 and 10-7 victories over SEC East champion Florida in Hoover and an exquisitely played 10-inning 2-1 loss to Georgia, a game ebbing and flowing much like last week’s epic versus Virginia, intangibly restored confidence in Hog futures.
Tangibly, coach Dave Van Horn made the move in Hoover that saved the season. For it was opening the SEC Tournament that Van Horn decided the best way to replace shortstop Scott Lyons, injured during the Ole Miss series, was moving senior second baseman Ben Tschepikow to shortstop and installing freshman reserve Bo Bigham at second.
Both parts of the revised tandem made the All-SEC Tournament team and starred through Tschepikow fracturing his ring finger when struck by a Virginia pitch.
These 41-24 Hogs will be remembered for sweeping the Regional in Norman, sweeping the Super Regional in Tallahassee and becoming Van Horn’s first of four teams (two at Nebraska and his 2004 Hogs) to win games at the College World Series.
But these memories likely never would have forged to relevance without that supposedly irrelevant conference tournament in Hoover.
(Nate Allen is a syndicated columnist who covers the Razorbacks for the Northwest Arkansas-Times. His columns appear each Wednesday and Friday in The Sun-Times.)
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Though all eight qualifying SEC Baseball Tournament teams advanced into the 2009 NCAA Regional postseason anyway, the supposedly irrelevant league tournament seldom has seemed more relevant.
At least to the two teams igniting from that SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. all the way to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
Eschewing the myth that the SEC regular season champ stands better off to play just a few games in the double-elimination league tournament then exit by the weekend to refresh for ensuing NCAA Regionals, the LSU Tigers won it all in Hoover. They have been winning it all ever since. They swept their Regional and Super Regional in Baton Rouge and in Omaha swept their four-team College World Series bracket going into Monday night’s start of the best 2 out of 3 for the national championship against Texas.
Texas is the unbeaten winner of the other CWS four-team bracket.
The Arkansas Razorbacks, the SEC’s other College World Series team, likely owe their Omaha existence to the SEC Tournament.
Without their 2-2 SEC Tournament bridging a regular-season ending eight straight SEC defeats, it’s hard to fathom the Hogs catching fire like they did postseason. Starting with a nine-run eighth-inning to overcome first-round foe Washington State, 10-3, the Razorbacks won the Norman Regional, including two wins over favored host Oklahoma, swept favored Florida State in the Super Regional at the Seminoles’ Dick Howser Stadium in Tallahassee, and then in Omaha stunned favored Cal State-Fullerton, 10-6 and won a thrilling 4-3 12-inning epic with Virginia.
Who knows? Perhaps if not bracketed with LSU, simply better than these Hogs as LSU proved with 9-1 and 14-5 beatings in Omaha after beating them 2 of 3 in Fayetteville, Arkansas might be the team this week playing LSU for the national championship.
Texas is awfully good, but those were awfully good Cal State-Fullerton and Virginia teams the Hogs beat in Omaha not to mention going 2-0 against OU in Norman and 2-0 against Florida State in Tallahassee.
The Arkansas team that embarrassed itself swept at home in its final regular-season 3-game series against Ole Miss, the last two losses were 9-3 and 16-3 surrenders, was not the same inspired team storming out of Hoover.
Arkansas did lose its last SEC Tournament game 11-1 to Vanderbilt. However that game, like when the Hogs got eliminated 14-5 by LSU last Friday in the bracket final, Arkansas ran out of pitching, not moxie.
Those 8-5 and 10-7 victories over SEC East champion Florida in Hoover and an exquisitely played 10-inning 2-1 loss to Georgia, a game ebbing and flowing much like last week’s epic versus Virginia, intangibly restored confidence in Hog futures.
Tangibly, coach Dave Van Horn made the move in Hoover that saved the season. For it was opening the SEC Tournament that Van Horn decided the best way to replace shortstop Scott Lyons, injured during the Ole Miss series, was moving senior second baseman Ben Tschepikow to shortstop and installing freshman reserve Bo Bigham at second.
Both parts of the revised tandem made the All-SEC Tournament team and starred through Tschepikow fracturing his ring finger when struck by a Virginia pitch.
These 41-24 Hogs will be remembered for sweeping the Regional in Norman, sweeping the Super Regional in Tallahassee and becoming Van Horn’s first of four teams (two at Nebraska and his 2004 Hogs) to win games at the College World Series.
But these memories likely never would have forged to relevance without that supposedly irrelevant conference tournament in Hoover.
(Nate Allen is a syndicated columnist who covers the Razorbacks for the Northwest Arkansas-Times. His columns appear each Wednesday and Friday in The Sun-Times.)
