CWS – Day One In Pictures
ColumnsOMAHA — Well there you go. It’s day one in the books for the College World Series. And we got a pair of 6-5 come-from-behind-in-the-ninth wins at the yard today.
We had a real nail-biter in game one as Oral Roberts rallied from a 5-2 deficit through eight innings to score four runs in the top of the ninth to take a scintillating 6-5 win over TCU. And in the night cap we had another come-from-behind rally as Florida overcame a 5-3 deficit with a couple of home runs and a deep RBI flyout to end the game with a one-run win over Virginia
THE FAST & FURIOUS FIVE
Five things that jumped out to me about the day at the College World Series.
1- So who’s in the best position after day one?… I’ve got Florida
No offense to the Cavaliers, the Golden Eagles and the Horned Frogs, but on this side of the bracket even going into today I thought the winner of tonight’s second game was going to be hard to beat twice. What will make it especially tough is if any team comes out of the loser’s bracket to face a 2-and-0 Gator team. And yes, I’m calling my shot that the Gators will get past ORU on Sunday night. Of course, ORU could very well come back to make me eat crow on that statement, which I will gladly do.
2- Speaking of being wrong, looks like it WILL be a home run-heavy CWS
This morning when I went on as a guest for 1620 The Zone, a local Omaha radio station, I was asked if I thought the bevy of home runs that we saw in the Regionals and Super Regionals would continue here in Omaha and I said, “Nope. This is the College World Series at the new stadium. It’s always been about pitching and defense.” Well as you saw, dingers played a big part of both games today as ORU hit two yard calls and Florida hit three bombs to help each of their teams forge their way to wins.
3- The Streak ends.
As I am sure they talked about ad nauseam during the first game, ORU’s Jonah Cox saw his 47-game hit streak come to an end on an 0-for-5 day at the dish. Of course, something tells me he will trade that hit streak for a W in the CWS. But it should be noted that Cox’s streak was the longest hitting streak in D1 since FIU’s Garrett Wittels had a 54-game streak that ended on the first day of the 2011 season.
4- LSU and Tennessee fans, get ready to be late to your game
At the beginning of today’s second game I looked around the stadium and I saw a very small crowd with large amounts of seats open throughout the stadium. But lo and behold the official attendance was 24,801. The problem is that the CWS treats each game as its own “session.” So that means the stadium has to be cleared of fans and then it can be re-entered. Since there was only 90 minutes between games today, so as you might expect there was a huge throng of people waiting to be allowed into the second game. So for LSU and Tennessee on Saturday night, expect to be late to your seats, so matter how early you get to the stadium.
5- The P.A. system at Charles Schwab Field needs to be re-calibrated.
The speakers at The Chuck are making the voice of public address announcer Bill Jensen nearly indecipherable. It just sounds like a big bubble of low-treble noise. In fact, at one point before the second game, Mr. Jensen does what he always does and asks the two fan bases to sound off. When he said, “Virginia fans, let’s hear ya’!” the Cavalier fans were completely silent since it was really hard to hear what he said. And while the cameras were fixed on the UVa fans in the stands, hoping to catch them cheering wildly. Instead the camera just caught a small group of Virginia fans calmly talking to each other until they realized they were up on the jumbotron, then they started waving and yelling.
PICS.
Here are a handful of images from the first day of the CWS, most of them taken by Lady StitchHead.
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