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There Is No Joy in Texas

Something happened last week that has to have some folks awfully worried at the moment. Two of the game's best programs, both on track for planned rides deep into the heart of Omaha, toodled off to their conference openers against decent but supposedly lesser competition and got their heads handed to them: Baylor 3/9/4, Texas 2/1/3 and San Jose State 10/5/4, Rice 8/1/1. The Texas offensive drought was especially shocking; six runs is a good but not great inning in Austin, not a weekend.

Now, there are two ways to respond to this (OK, there are more than two, but sacrificing a spotted gecko as propitiation to the bunt gods probably isn't all that useful, so we'll just go with two): Shrug it off and assume that it's just a bad weekend that you try to forget, or decide that championship teams just don't do that sort of thing and start looking forward to football season (this is obviously more of an option for Longhorn fans than Owl fans). Having no access to the future, we'll have to look to the past for guidance on which to choose. I've checked before, and the team with the shortest longest losing streak (if that makes sense) almost never wins the championship. Sweeps, though, are an interesting animal, so let's see how often they happen to the best. Here's the worst stretch for each of the champion teams back to 1997:

• LSU, 1997. They never got swept, but they lost two conference series at Mississippi State and Alabama. The Alabama loss followed a loss at Arkansas, and those three were the longest losing streak of the year.
• USC West, 1998. They had a really rough patch in early April, losing two of three to Stanford at home, getting swept at Arizona State, and losing to Loyola Marymount midweek. OK, so it can happen.
• Miami South, 1999. They never got swept for three days, but they lost a two-game series at Florida in early February followed by a loss at FIU. That was the only three-game losing streak.
• LSU, 2000. 2/20: Arizona State 6, LSU 2; McNeese State 9, LSU 8; Houston 10, LSU 2; Houston 11, LSU 7; Houston 10, LSU 2; all at home. This wasn't a very good team until the postseason, but flags fly forever.
• Miami South, 2001. They went all season without losing back-to-back games, except for that little weekend at home when Fullerton disemboweled them three straight.
• Texas, 2002. They lost two series to Baylor and Nebraska but won the Saturday game in both, so they managed to go the whole season without ever losing two games in a row -- a rare feat indeed.
• Rice, 2003. They had a couple of two-game losing streaks but never lost a series in the comfortable confines of the WAC.
• Cal State Fullerton, 2004. They opened the series with a sweep loss at Stanford. It got better a bit, but they also lost series against Arizona and Long Beach and a couple of games against Texas.

The short version, then, is that the nooses can be put away so we can get on with the season. There's good news on the other front, though; two of the four teams that pulled off the sweep made it to Omaha, so life in Waco especially has to look pretty good right now, and there's some hope in San Jose.

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

This is one generic layman's predictions for who gets in the tournament. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid.

America East   Louisiana-Lafayette    Rutgers              South Carolina
A10            College of Charleston  Winthrop             Florida
CAA            Miami, Florida         Coastal Carolina     Arkansas
Horizon        Florida State          UC Irvine            Alabama
MAAC           North Carolina         Long Beach State     Auburn
MAC            Georgia Tech           Cal State Fullerton  Vanderbilt
MEAC           Clemson                UC Riverside         Tennessee
Ivy            North Carolina State   Oregon State         Mississippi State
Brigham Young  Central Florida        Stanford             Northwestern State
NEC            Florida Atlantic       Arizona State        Texas State
OVC            Texas                  Washington           Rice
Patriot        Texas A&M              Arizona              San Jose State
SWAC           Nebraska               Southern California  Texas Christian
Pepperdine     Texas Tech             California           East Carolina
Oral Roberts   Baylor                 Louisiana State      Tulane
Wichita State  Michigan               Mississippi          Southern Mississippi

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> There Is No Joy in Texas

About the author, Boyd Nation