This has been kind of coming. We’ve been coming back to the pack for the last third of the season slowly, but surely. Even in the SEC tourney our pitching was a little suspect. Maybe the pressure got to them or what, but we were handled pretty solidly, outside of one explosion yesterday, by Notre Dame.
This feels so much like basketball season. Baseball had a better peak and cooled off a bit late, whereas hoops started rough and got hot toward the end, but they both turned in some of the best seasons in school history, broke conference tournament droughts, and lost to Midwestern teams in the second round.
Baseball postseason is always a crapshoot. Best regular season team almost never wins, NCAA or MLB. I'll take a kick ass regular season, IMHO.
We did win the conference tournament (in a conference that will probably have multiple teams in the CWS and may have the top remaining seed), but the bats got quieter, the pitching got streakier, and the fielding was noticeably worse. I think we might’ve still been playing like the best team in the country, but it wasn’t by the kind of margin it was in April. We didn’t give Notre Dame anything like an easy time, but we gave them enough chances, and they took them. Keep putting out good teams and eventually we’re going to win something, but my goodness it feels like we’re stuck in the mud come tournament time in every sport (it might personally feel even more like that after I just watched my NHL team have their all-time best regular season and blow it at home in the second round).
