chw42

On top of the results, great ABs from Luis today. Saw a ton of pitches and battled to stay alive.

Both teams are great offensively. But UConn is much better defensively. I was actually impressed at how good we were defensively yesterday (especially the first half). Part of that might have been Iowa State forgetting how to play basketball though. I thought we were gonna struggle badly on offense against that style of defense, but we did a great job of passing out of doubles and finding the open guy. The way I see it, if we get hot from 3 and we actually hit our FTs, I think we can hang. UConn is an 8.5 point favorite ATM. That's usually a spread you see when a top team plays like the 8th or 9th seed. Not playing another top 10 team.

I don't think Illinois is gonna beat UConn. But you never know.

The game would be over if we could hit FTs.

At least they didn't drag this out.

When did Foley start throwing over 100?

That's a pitch old Yoan sends 430 feet.

What's the point of Pillar if he can't hit lefties?

It's absolutely wild to me that Kopech has worse stuff than Crochet as a reliever.

Nothing fun about a low scoring game you lose.

You never know with Pedro

Luis just got under that.

Crochet still hitting 98 in the 6th. This is far beyond expectations.

What a start

At least they hit a couple of balls hard that inning.

I know Skubal is really good, but we look embarrassingly bad.

I think it's pretty clear that after Crochet got pulled in the 2020 playoffs, his elbow was probably hanging on by a thread. He never really had the stuff we saw in 2020 after that. His stuff is better now than it was in 2021 after TJS and he's doing that as a starter. Now he just needs to hold up for 120 innings this year.

It's coming.

Has anyone told him to swing earlier?

What's funny is that Maldonado actually came closest to getting the first XBH.

DeJong's bat is slow and his swing is long.

Two terrible calls that AB.

Nice piece of hitting from Eloy.

Skubal looked shaky early. Now he's locked in and we look like we have no shot.

I almost forgot just how bad he is at fielding. The guy is all arms and legs when he fields the ball.