The coaches at Charlotte and Southern Miss must've never learned that brilliant pearl of wisdom that you have to start your ace in Game 1 regardless of rest, health, and matchups. Both UNCC and USM "saved" their aces for guaranteed Game 2 to keep their aces on their regular schedules.
If you start anyone else they are going on shorter rest. I doubt Griffen or Miller would not have been ready to go after starting Friday and Saturday. Apparently Charlotte's ace was not ready to pitch so they started the FR and he was very good. I have no problem starting Harris, it just didn't work out. He had 5 days off to recover from his last start Thursday.
We just did not have the pitching talent or depth this season to get it done and it all comes down to pitching.
We scored 2 runs against UNCCs non-ace. Not sure one more days rest makes that much difference with Nate - still pitching 2-3 days earlier than normal start. We will not go far in any tourney only scoring 2 runs. We had (8) Ks last night most with runners on base. Got to win this time of year, got play best baseball. Nate is a location pitcher at his best he gets ahead in the count. From the very start last night he was struggling to get ahead and UNCC did a good job of making him throw strikes. If UNCC can do that to Nate why cant we do the same the USMs ace? Lunceford and Boggs need to have good games while our other hitters keep producing. We need their RBIs if we are going to get on a roll.
False.
Nate didn't pitch last Thursday. He pitched last Friday and only had 4 days rest this week. That's after he only had 5 days rest the week before. He hasn't had a full week's rest since 3 starts ago. He wasn't sharp his last 4 outings now, and on his coach's show on Monday, Burroughs talked about how Nate was wearing down and how Charlotte wasn't a good matchup for Nate. I saw this coming a mile away.
Griffen was who pitched on Thursday at MTSU and was yanked in just the 2nd inning because of the bad matchup. Griffen was 100% fresh, was a better matchup vs. Charlotte, and should've been our starter for Game 1. Griffen had been solid every outing except that one.
Charlotte's ace wasn't ready because they didn't want to move him up a day to knock him off his regular rest schedule.
Sorry thought he started the Thursday game so he could go game 1. In the end, it did not matter who we started game one. We did not have enough pitching this season to get it done even if Goff were here to coach the team he built. Evidence #1 is that we had to move Nate into the rotation because we had NO ONE else who could start and give us 4-5 solid innings against top conference teams.