Shox vs. Alcorn St. Games 1 & 2

[shox1989]

Wow the Alcorn starter comes back out to start the sixth. He has had to throw a gazillion pitches. He walks Halbert. Doggett gets a hit. Halbert advances to second. Kevin Hall gets a base hit. Halbert scores. Shox 6-3. They finally take the Alcorn starter out.

Lambert bunts the runners over. Hall and Doggett on 2nd and 3rd with one out. Coy strikes out but the ball gets past the catcher and Doggett scores, Coy gets to first. Shox 7-3 with Hall on third and Coy at first with still one out. Casey strikes out. Aaron Rea pinch hits for Coughenhour. Aaron gets a hit! Hall scores. Shox 8-3. Dayne Parker walks to load the bases. Hege grounds out. After 6, Shox 8-3.

[shox1989]

Foster Vielock comes out to pitch the 7th. He faces 4 batters with a strike out, strike out, plunked a batter and then a strike out. Shox 8-3.

[shox1989]

Doggett gets a hit and steals second. Kevin Hall walks. Shox get the double steal. Doggett scores on a WP. Lambert walks. Hall scores on a WP. Lambert steals third. Coy strikes out. Casey gets a stand up double! Aaron Rea gets a hit! Shox 12-3 after 7 complete. I am cold and going home. GO SHOX!

[WuDrWu]

Has anyone paid attention to USA and Long Beach? Beach is 6-13 and USA has a losing record and a 200 RPI. This is looking worse and worse all the time.

Nebraska, at 50 (and certain to fall in the week Big10) is the highest rated team remaining on the non conference schedule, rpi wise.

[shox1989]

Shox win 12-4. Vielock also pitched the 8th and Drew Rainey pitched the ninth.

[shox1989]

Has anyone paid attention to USA and Long Beach? Beach is 6-13 and USA has a losing record and a 200 RPI. This is looking worse and worse all the time.

Nebraska, at 50 (and certain to fall in the week Big10) is the highest rated team remaining on the non conference schedule, rpi wise.

Long Beach always plays a brutal schedule. Even though they are currently 6-13 their rpi is 85. I would be very surprised if they didn't finish the season in the top 100 and they could still make the top 50.

USA's schedule is back loaded. They have only played one top 50 team so far, Auburn and they lost. They still have 12 more top 50 teams on their schedule. So just playing those games will help their rpi a lot. Unless they win more games they probably aren't going to be in the top 50 or top 100 but they should finish much better then their current #200.

[shox1989]

The big 12 teams on our schedule usually play relatively weak non-con schedules but their rpis improve a lot once they start playing big 12 games (Okie State- 166, Ku- 179, Kstate-168).

UNL on the other hand, will have a tough time staying in the top 50 playing in the big 10 but barring a string of losses they should still stay in the top 100.

[shox1989]

Our rpi is now at 38 after beating Alcorn St tonight. The other good thing this year compared to most years is that there are no rpi killers right now in the Valley: MoST #48, Ill. St. #72, Indy St. #88, Bradley #110, UE #139, SIU #142, and Cu #156 (LOL)

All but Cu is in the top 150. It looks like the 21 conference games aren't going to be killers this year. And some could be very helpful.

Also we have 3 games against Dallas Baptist (#69) which could be top 50 by the end of the season and should be at least a top 100 team.

Bottom line is we should have a ton of games against the top 100 this year and some against the top 50.

[tru2thaduce]

I'm thinking our RPI may have peaked.The way our future opponents look,Missouri State may be the best team we have left to play.

[martymoose]

It was packed at the Eck tonight. Including myself and 2 kids, I think there were about 10 of us on the hill tonight....should have brought my 1 year old and made it 11.

[shox1989]

If everyone finished the season with the rpis they have now, WSU would end up playing 14 games against the top 50 and 15 games against teams 51-100. That would mean about 25% of our schedule would be against the top 50 and another 25% would be against the top 51-100. We have a total of 6 games against teams 200+.

Now rpis are going to change, but some are going to get better and some are going to get worse. Overall this looks like a pretty good schedule.

[shox1989]

I'm thinking our RPI may have peaked.The way our future opponents look,Missouri State may be the best team we have left to play.

It depends on how many games we win here on out. Having a rpi of 38 with a 13-10 record is pretty hard to do. But if we can win a decent amount of our games our strong SOS will keep our rpi good. We won't have a rpi of 38 if we finish the season around .500, but if we can get a little winning streak going we should be in good shape.

[ShockerFever]

I haven't seen so much sugarcoating and optimism in a thread involving Alcorn State in quite a while. Very impressive.

[ShockerFever]

Has anyone paid attention to USA and Long Beach? Beach is 6-13 and USA has a losing record and a 200 RPI. This is looking worse and worse all the time.

Nebraska, at 50 (and certain to fall in the week Big10) is the highest rated team remaining on the non conference schedule, rpi wise.

Don't worry. '89 has both of them in the World Series by the time it's all said and done. They're just in "rough" stretches right now. Our Top 40 RPI, which is constantly being brought up, is totally legit and credible right now. But those opponents with RPI's around 200 aren't credible right now. Every opponent we face is gonna finish the year in the Top 50. No worries, Doc.

[shocker3]

I am glad we ended up beating these guys rather convincingly.

It is too early to focus on actual RPIs right now. They are still too fluid. They are going to change a lot between now and end of the season.

The best thing I heard about Alcorn State tonight is that they are picked to win their conference. I hope they do. I hope they dominate it. Right now their 3-17 record really hurts our RPI but if they end up dominating their conference and end up at .500 or better they won't end up affecting our SOS very much at all.

The key to buying guarantee games is to get teams that will dominate their conference. Their ultimate won/loss records don't end up hurting you. The worst thing you can do is end up playing teams like Chicago State that finish the season with very few wins (Chicago State is currently 0-15 in baseball without many prospects of getting very many wins).