[d4cohn]

The tough thing about being a top ranked team, as one sees from the jubilant celebrations from Utah, you get everyone's best effort. Utah is a very good offensive team and playing at altitude, the ball travels, leading to more scoring. I actually think stranding 9 runners today was the issue. We had runners on the corners with only 1 out up 1 in T7; plating that runner from third would have been a brobdingnagian boost. 

Our team is still a pretty young team, so it seems like we are still getting experience closing out close games on the road, with a motivated crowd and team.

The series at home against UW to close out regular season play becomes very big; I think we still get a top 8 seed, in part because I think we will win that series at home against UW, but I wouldn't be surprised if our seeding belied our RPI ranking, because if I being objective (and temporarily take my fan hat off), I think getting swept on the road at Utah and UCLA, losing to Duke, losing to OU, we haven't pulled off many top-end wins (other than the road wins at UGA). And by top-end I mean wins against top 8, if not top 16 competition. There is something to be said for winning the games you are supposed to win and avoiding bad losses, which we have done a spectacular job of doing.

But I worry whether a lack of top-end of top-end wins will lead to a top 16 seed as opposed to top 8.

[d4cohn]

The tough thing about being a top ranked team, as one sees from the jubilant celebrations from Utah, you get everyone's best effort. Utah is a very good offensive team and playing at altitude, the ball travels, leading to more scoring. I actually think stranding 9 runners today was the issue. We had runners on the corners with only 1 out up 1 in T7; plating that runner from third would have been a brobdingnagian boost. 

Our team is still a pretty young team, so it seems like we are still getting experience closing out close games on the road, with a motivated crowd and team.

The series at home against UW to close out regular season play becomes very big; I think we still get a top 8 seed, in part because I think we will win that series at home against UW, but I wouldn't be surprised if our seeding belied our RPI ranking, because if I being objective (and temporarily take my fan hat off), I think getting swept on the road at Utah and UCLA, losing to Duke, losing to OU, we haven't pulled off many top-end wins (other than the road wins at UGA). And by top-end I mean wins against top 8, if not top 16 competition. There is something to be said for winning the games you are supposed to win and avoiding bad losses, which we have done a spectacular job of doing.

But I worry whether a lack of top-end of top-end wins will lead to a top 16 seed as opposed to top 8.