College World Series

Dates: Thursday, June 23rd
Good Guys: Texas Tech Red Raiders (47-19, 19-5)
Bad Guys: Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (50-17, 21-3)
Location: Ameritrade Park | Omaha, Nebraska
Game Notes: Preview | PDF
TV/Stream: ESPN2
Radio/Stream: Broadcast Affiliates

After beating Florida to start the tournament, CCU lost to TCU yesterday, 6-1 and now, CCU is facing elimination, while Texas Tech has been in this seat for the game against Florida and are sitting there again. CCU is led offensively by Connor Owings, who is hitting .368 on the year with 16 home runs and slugging .671. Three other players have double-digit home runs, including Zach Remillard, hitting .348 with 19 home runs, C.K. Young, hitting .347 with 17 home runs and Michael Paez, hitting .293 with 15 home runs. CCU is a team that can knock the heck out of the ball, they have 94 home runs on the year, compared to 55 for Texas Tech, which is good, but Coastal Carolina is on a different level. I don’t know much about Bilous other than he was probably a spot starter and we’re probably not getting the best pitching match-up. Bilous has 45 strikeouts to 31 walks, which is a ton considering he’s only pitched 42.1 innings.

* LAJ’s Krista Pirtle writes about the team’s motto this year “Water That Tree”:

After every double, whichever Red Raider stood on second base, he began to do something curious.

He knelt down, and acted like he was planting seeds in the ground, watering them and finally pointing to the dugout where water was being thrown everywhere by his Texas Tech teammates.

It was, of course, a symbolic gesture that these Red Raiders know it takes time for things to grow — that there are no shortcuts, no quick fixes to reach the perfect outcome. And no settling for anything but the desired result.

* Winston-Salem Journal writes about staving off elimination:

Coastal Carolina (50-17), which beat No. 1 national seed Florida 2-1 in its first CWS game on Sunday, scored in the sixth inning but otherwise didn’t do much against Brian Howard and Ryan Burnett.

Coastal Carolina will play Texas Tech at 8 p.m. today in an elimination game. The winner of that game will play TCU on Friday.

“My frustration is even though we won a game, we had to have a heroic pitching effort to get it done,” coach Gary Gilmore of the Chanticleers said. “We’re a better team than we’ve shown. Hopefully we can come back Thursday and show people how we actually got here.”

* LAJ’s Krista Pirtle has a notebook where she looks at Martin Davis’ start, Hayden Howard continuing to close and the Big 12’s success.

Stats

Probable Starters:

Game 1: Thursday, June 23rd @ 7:00 pm
Texas Tech Starting Pitcher: LHP Erikson Lanning (3-3, 5.07)
Coastal Carolina Pitcher: RHP Jason Bilous (3-1, 4.04)
Final Score & Box Score: –