Posts by Jon Nyatawa
Trey Porter saw that a left-handed reliever had emerged from Indiana’s bullpen. He turned toward the dugout and expected to hear his coach tell him to sit down.
Porter swings from the left-hand side of the plate. He’s been platooning at designated hitter all year, usually relegated to the bench when a team begins the game with a left-handed starter.
He had four at-bats during the postseason before Monday night. And with runners on second and third in a 3-3 game with two outs in the eighth inning — aka: the biggest moment of the season — Porter figured he was done.
He was wrong.
The senior stayed in and drove a 3-1 fastball off lefty reliever Brian Korte to right-center field, plating two runs …
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The Hoosiers were trailing by three runs in the bottom of the ninth two weeks ago and the eventual hero was yelling at himself in the bathroom.
Chad Clark’s two-out error — a slow-roller skipped off his glove — allowed two insurance runs to score in the top half. Was Indiana seriously about to drop a Regional opener to Valparaiso and fall into the loser’s bracket? The milestone season wasn’t supposed to be over this soon.
Clark couldn’t believe it. So he did the first thing that came to his mind before his team came to bat: Sprint to the bathroom, slam the door and scream.
“I was fortunate enough to block it out,” Clark said. “Had it lingered, there’s no way I would have …
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Oregon State’s players had cleared all their gear out of the dugout and were on their way to a locker-room celebration before Louisville’s head coach had finished his post-game speech to his team in left field.
The Cardinals went 0-2 in Omaha, and by the way they reacted Monday afternoon, they truly expected more.
Coach Dan McDonnell told the Cardinals to celebrate reaching the College World Series for the first time since 2007 and setting a school record with 51 wins. But that was hard right after the Beavers blew them out.
A few guys crouched down in the TD Ameritrade Park outfield, dropping their heads in their hands. Teammates hugged (and not in that stereotypical man-hug way, where you’re almost afraid of prolonged contact) …
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Oregon State pitcher Matt Boyd doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that somewhere around the country right now, there’s a hotel room full of little leaguers from the Northwest cheering on the Beavers.
That’s what Boyd and his buddies were doing in 2006 and 2007, when Oregon State won back-to-back national titles here in Omaha. One year they were watching from a tournament in Florida. The next year, it was Arizona.
They had games to play, but they made sure to tune in and watch as much as they could.
“There was like 15 of us huddled around our hotel room TV,” Boyd said. “I remember saying to a few of my buddies, I want to do that. I want to represent the Northwest. We …
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By no means are we going to end the debate here. Critics of and advocates for sacrifice bunts are firmly entrenched in their side of the argument.
Shoot, maybe you just let the guys swing away and forget the tactical nonsense.
But for the sake of discussion, let’s take some time to look back on what went wrong in the ninth inning for LSU in its heartbreaking 2-1 loss to UCLA at the College World Series Sunday night.
The scenario: The Tigers, down by one run, had their leadoff guy reach in the bottom of the ninth. Left fielder Raph Rhymes (the 5-hole hitter) was at the plate against the Bruins’ dynamite closer, David Berg. Rhymes doesn’t have a sacrifice bunt this year, but he …
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From now until the start of fall camp, The World-Herald will be counting down the top 50 players you need to know heading into the 2013 football season.
Meet No. 47:
Chongo Kondolo | 6-4 | 290 pounds | Junior | Offensive lineman
It became clear to offensive line coach John Garrison midway through spring practice that Nebraska needed to better develop its second-string offensive line. Good thing Kondolo was preparing to join the team this summer.
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| Click here to see previous entries in the Husker Camp Countdown series. |
Kondolo is projected to jump into the mix at guard or center, and if he’s able to adjust to the scheme quickly enough this fall, he might even find himself in the rotation.
Right guard Spencer …
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Someone had to lose Sunday’s UCLA-LSU game, but it was clear rather early that the night’s decisive mistakes weren’t going to be made by the two starting pitchers.
Junior Adam Plutko and sophomore Aaron Nola were fantastic. It’s a shame that one had to leave the park wondering what more he could have done.
The Bruins got the 2-1 win, scoring two unearned runs and avoiding Tuesday’s elimination game against North Carolina. That’s where LSU will be now, though, because the Tigers couldn’t solve Plutko and capitalize on a stellar effort from their ace.
It’s not often you see a team win a game when it goes 0-for-15 with runners on base, much less score twice. LSU wasn’t much better, though, managing just one hit …
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Chris Cotton initially enrolled at LSU with no plans to play baseball in college, but he soon persuaded himself to join a walkoff tryout.
He had nothing to lose, he figured. He simply showed up. No contact with the LSU staff beforehand. No recommendations, either. Coach Paul Mainieri had never seen him throw.
It was the fall of his freshman year when the 5-foot-10 left-hander tossed a bullpen session for Mainieri, then returned the next day to scrimmage with the rest of the potential walk-ons. He was one of five to get an invite back for the spring.
But Cotton still didn’t know then if he’d be on the team. It wasn’t until two days before opening day that he had a locker and clearance …
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Senior Brett Williams stepped to the plate for his second at-bat against UNC starter Kent Emanuel with a pretty good idea of what to expect.
That’s the benefit of familiarity. He figured he’d see a breaking ball if Emanuel started with a fastball — so when that off-speed pitch came in an 0-1 count, Williams was ready.
He crushed an RBI-double down the left field line as part of NC State’s four-run third inning, a surge of two-out production that ultimately buried the Tar Heels in a 8-1 blowout.
“I guessed right and got a lot of barrel on it,” Williams said.
But that was sort of the theme for the Wolfpack in their first CWS appearance since 1968. They matched up against a team …
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North Carolina coach Roy Williams is no stranger to the College World Series. He usually makes at least one appearance each time the Tar Heels make it to Omaha.
So no surprise he was at the ballpark Sunday — caught on the Jumbotron posing for photos with fans (he was interviewed on the big screen as well). As you might imagine, that made his section a popular place for UNC supporters to gather between innings of the Tar Heels’ game against NC State.
Bodies were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the normally spacious concourse behind Williams’ seat. The aisles nearby flooded, too. Williams never really sat down during breaks in the action Sunday. A glimpse of the scene is below…
Williams wasn’t the only hoops coach on …
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