College World Series Final Matchup: Coastal Carolina vs Arizona
Two teams that against all odds, made their way as underdogs through the Super Regionals, all the way through the field of 8 and into the College World Series final. This is everything we love about baseball. Anyone can beat anyone on any given day. Compare it to other sports. Look at NCAA football or basketball. Teams like Coastal Carolina and UC Santa Barbara have virtually 0 chance to compete at this level in either sport. But this is baseball, and this is why we love it.
Arizona made their way through a bracket with Miami, UC Santa Barbara, and Oklahoma State. Coastal Carolina played through Florida, Texas Tech, and TCU. The two bracket winners will meet on Monday night under the lights of TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska to begin a 3 game series to decide a champion.
It’s been a relatively low scoring tournament thus far. All but 4 games the entire CWS have gone under the vegas run total. Offensive numbers were down this year in comparison to last year. It seems every year the NCAA is making changes to the bats or the baseballs to get the offensive numbers where they’d like them. This year offensive numbers (HRs) went up, but so did strike outs. The recent changes with the new baseballs have allowed balls to fly farther, but also break more. In my opinion, the bats and balls are right where they need to be.
Coastal Carolina’s ace Andrew Beckwith is coming off a 138 pitch performance in the first matchup with TCU. If the final series goes to game 3, he will have 4 days rest. At that point, I wouldn’t be shocked to see CCU throw out Beckwith for game 3. Beckwith has thrown two complete games so far this tournament, over Florida and TCU. He’s 14–1 on the year and the Chanticleers would love nothing more than to have him on the hill in a game 3 with the title on the line.
Arizona’s ace Nathan Bannister is 12–2 on the year with a 2.59 ERA. He got hit pretty good in his last outing vs Oklahoma state, and only went 2.2 innings on Friday. He’ll surely be available and fresh for the final series.
Pitching is usually the difference maker in big time series like this, although as of late we’ve been seeing more runs scored toward the end of the tournament. A lot of that is due to the worn down pitching staffs of these teams that both had to reach the final with a loss, meaning they had to play an extra game.
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Originally published at baseballfam.com on June 26, 2016.
