(06-12-2023, 09:58 PM)fullmetal Wrote: Baseball just clinched the Director's Cup for Stanford!
By the same logic, baseball just clinched the sun rising tomorrow.
By my spreadsheet above, it was the M T&F that clinched it, if you want to claim that for the team that happened to score the points when they became sufficient to guarantee the win, with other teams' (baseball) guaranteed positions. Stanford could have lost the Super Regionals and still would have won the Director's Cup even if UT won the MCWS.
But, in my book, I'd take my hat off first to the M Gym, W WP, and the Rowing teams, and to all the other athletes who participated, whether their team's points contributed to the final total or not.
25 teams scored for Stanford. In other years, and hopefully in the near future, we may again get points from MWP, WFH, WLAX, MVB, MBB, and FB teams. Not all years do all teams score, and some years, some of Stanford's traditionally great teams stumble a bit, but Stanford demonstrably has the most diverse, most consistent, highest quality set of NCAA teams. The last two years, UTexas didn't hold a candle to Stanford except by the handicap leveled against Stanford.
The future will be tougher for Stanford against the free agent teams of the rest of the NCAA. (A preseason look indicated "Wake [Forest baseball] added six transfers for the upcoming ’22-’23 season, all of whom will be coming from the D1 level.") UTexas's $200M athletic budget, plus donor money, could buy them as many top teams as Stanford has, but they haven't gotten there yet.
