Landon Packard had an excellent year, and personally I was very glad to see him walk off a hard collision at home with Linfield's catcher, Jake Gellos. 

But, honestly, Scotty Hilpert had an amazing year that was cut short a very unfortunate outfield collision that resulted in a tib-fib fracture.  He is a very well deserved POY winner, as is Cason Cunningham on the pitching side of the ledger.  Hilpert's 12 home runs are still in the top three in the country even though he has missed the last week of games.

Willamette may be 6-2 at Roy Helser Field, but four of those wins were against Pacific and Whitman, which may prove to be relevant.

We met with Scotty in the hospital and he was in very good spirits, all things considered.  They inserted a rod to secure the fracture and he'll be in a boot for about three months, plus some rehab time after that.  He's planning to be at the playoff games in McMinnville next weekend, and the team is determined to keep winning for him.  The Whitman trainers and the doctors at the local hospital were all excellent and very kind.  I know he appreciated their attention and skill.

Hopefully this will be an unfortunate start to a long playoff run.   

Definitely has been a tough weekend for George Fox in Arizona.  Hopefully they can get the season turned around.

Linfield got off to a good start today in the late game, holding on for a tight 2-1 win over Cal Lu.  Both sides played pretty well considering it was their first game of the season, though there were definitely a few rough edges to work out.  Cason Cunningham pitched 5 1/3 scoreless, and Matt Strang came in to finish it.  Cal Lu mounted a challenge in the 9th but Strang induced a flyball to center to end it with runners on second and third.  If the rest of Linfield's pitching matches up to this effort, and the offense starts clicking a bit better, this could be a return to good things for the program.

Nice to see Linfield get a first win of the season over Cal Lu, 2-1.  Pretty high quality game overall considering it was the first game of the year for both teams.   Linfield's pitching was very good, both from the starter, Cason Cunningham, and the reliever, Matt Strang.  Linfield finished with about 8 hits, including the critical two RBI triple to center by Scott Hilpert in the 6th.  Cal Lu definitely played well, and almost mounted a comeback in the ninth before Strang ended it with a fly out to center with runners at second and third. 

   

Go Wildcats!

Truly a great performance by Cal Neely.  And very solid hitting throughout the lineup. 

Keep it going for two more games!!

Linfield and LaVerne played two games in AZ to start the season.  Linfield won both 13-5 and 10-7, and faced ten or so LaVerne pitchers over the two games.  Thomasson and Justin Davis were the starters, fwiw. 

My guess is that Linfield will start Davis for this one, Haddeland against Trinity and Thomasson in a third game if necessary. 

OK; I am confused. Tyler tournament website says all games have been moved to Friday. D3Baseball indicates Trinity/Millsaps will be played at 11pmEDT tonight. Accuweather indicated that it stopped raining at about 8:30CDT.

Does anyone know what the schedule is?
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Linfield and Trinity will restart on Friday at 10.  Game 5 & 6 will follow.  I'm not sure what they will do for games 7-10, but presumably they will extend into Sunday on those. 

Other options might be to play some games simultaneously on other fields.  Or possibly to play by KC rules, but that would be horrible. 

The Tyler weather forecast is showing at least some thunderstorms every day between Friday and Wednesday. 

The feed at the moment has awesome clouds and thunder claps.  It's pretty cool from a meteorological point of view, but not so much for baseball.... 

Linfield's bats are now coming alive.  They are up 9-6 over UT Tyler in T7, but the game is on hold, again, for a lightning delay.  Two days in a row...   

Thomasson started off well, but got roughed up for 10 hits, and six runs in 5.1 innings.  Most of the damage came in the 6th.  But, to Linfield's credit, their bats are responding, now with 9 runs on 8 hits.   

The weather forecast for Tyler is pretty ominous through the weekend.  Accuweather is calling for thunderstorms every day, and Saturday is the only day with less than three hours of storms forecast.  If this is accurate, it could make for a very fractured and haphazard regional.  Is it too late to relocate to McMinnville, Tacoma, or the LA area?

A little insider info for you all.  Linfield and Whitworth are both flying from Portland to Tyler tonight, on the same plane.  Could make for an interesting flight!   

Linfield played some early season games in Arizona against both LaVerne and UTDallas.  They went 4-0, beating LaVerne 13-5 & 10-7, and UTD 6-0 and 22-10.  Although the games were very early in the season, it is interesting that UTD did pretty well in the ASC tournament.  It is going to be fun seeing how this all plays out.  On their second trip to AZ, the Wildcats beat Wesleyan and Concordia-Chicago, who are in the New England and Midwest brackets respectively. 

Looking at the other regionals, it certainly seems like the South and West regionals are pretty loaded with ranked and 30+ win teams.  Both the New England and NY regionals look very weak in comparison, and that is even with the NCAA shipping three ranked teams out of the South. 

Speaking of the upcoming championship, does anyone know the format the NWC will use?  Is it a straightforward loser out 4v1, 3v2 single game format, or a round robin of some sort?   

Quote from: WestisBest on March 18, 2015, 08:17:12 PM
Hello. I stumbled across this board awhile ago and finally decided to join the conversation about the NWC.  I've been watching UPS for the last two years, so I've seen most of the conference teams play.

As for last weekend's UPS-Willamette rainout games - there was no way the field would have been playable on Monday. That field drains poorly and it was inundated with water. So playing on Monday was not an option. Also, WU is into midterms this week and that may have factored into the decision on whether to try and play on Monday.

I know this board has a lot of love for Linfield, but after seeing them 4 times this year, I don't share that perspective.  Its defense is up and down, and outside of 2 or 3 hitters, the offense has sputtered. And the pitching was average.

This should be the year another team claims the conference title.  Don't know who it will be, but it should be a really fun post-season tournament.

I agree that Linfield did not play well in the UPS series at Tacoma, but remember this is a relatively young team with quite a few sophomores and freshman making major contributions.  They started off conference play with series against PLU and UPS, two of the tougher teams.  As the AZ results indicate, they do have quite a bit of ability on the team.

UPS is 2-2 on the season against Linfield, with one of the losses out of conference.  Also, UPS just lost the midweek out of conference game to PLU, and has four more games against PLU remaining.  When the dust settles for the conference tournament, I suspect Linfield will be in the midst of the hunt.  As you say, it should make for an interesting tournament. 

Quote from: Jack Parkman on March 16, 2015, 02:37:29 PM
Will UPS and Willamette make up the rained out games?  It shows as canceled on the UPS site but those games could be huge in the overall standings.

Whitman and George Fox are making up their game from Sunday.  Whitman is currently up 3-2 with 2 outs in the 8th.  Not sure about UPS and Willamette, but they should since the games are so critical in a close league race.