The Wave is Back

After an impressive weekend sweep of Charlotte, the second sweep in a row, the Wave is back atop C-USA and #1 in Collegiate Baseball's poll. Nine wins in a row will always go a long way to soothing fretting back-benchers like me. The struggles during the Louisville series appear to be just some mid-season doldrums- perhaps even understandable coming after a few weekends of high intensity outings.

Winning solves everything. One guy starts to hit- which correspondingly takes the pressure off other guys- so they too immediately begin to hit. Same thing with pitching. The Wave sure looks like a better team with Owings playing like an All-American than merely having the credentials of one.

Most of my angst stems from the simple fact that while Tulane is Omaha-level good, they have a glaring problem. Their lack of a true lights out Friday starter hurts them. The Wave cannot afford to play in a regional or even super regional featuring both a quality team with a big arm to throw at them- so it behooves them to play hard for a high NCAA seed. Sixteen teams will make the super regionals. Seeded in the top three spots, Tulane might not see a true Top 15 team until they get to Omaha- and thus avoid a big pitcher with a good team in a near "one and almost done" situation.

Thus, it is important that Tulane not screw around. Win this league's regular season- and render the conference tournament semi-unimportant for them. At this point, based on their tough out of conference schedule, if Tulane wins the league regular season the Wave is a very high NCAA seed. Then the league tournament does not matter so much- as long as they put in any kind of a decent league tournament appearance.

Also, nice to see LSU playing, well, frankly really bad.

Like Owings, I too was once a five-tool player: