Quote :

"The more I think about our game tomorrow the better I feel about our chances."

Please think even more and improve our chances. We need all the luck we can get!

[Edited on June 19, 2013 at 3:12 PM. Reason : ..]

6/19/2013 3:12:09 PM

6/19/2013 3:15:52 PM

Stone to pitch against UNC.

I like it.

6/19/2013 8:50:53 PM

We don't need luck to beat the heels. We fucking crushed them last game.

6/19/2013 9:00:40 PM

do we know who unc is throwing ?

6/19/2013 9:15:57 PM

I think Chaz Jackington

6/19/2013 10:04:24 PM

Leopold VonJerkingson III

6/19/2013 10:06:06 PM

It'll have to be Hobbs Johnson. SC rocked him pretty hard last time out.

6/19/2013 10:08:34 PM

Yeah but he shut us down pretty much in the ACCT game, so definitely not excited about seeing him out there.

6/20/2013 7:37:18 AM

I felt like it was more our fail hitting than his pitching that owned us the last time we saw him. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

6/20/2013 7:58:04 AM

^Isn't that what good pitching is? To make the other team fail hitting?

6/20/2013 8:42:14 AM

I like that Stone is getting the call over Ogburn. UNC has struggled with lefties recently, so Stone has that going for him.

That said, I still think we might see Rodon for a few innings out of the pen. I know it's just one game and that we'd have to win two more to advance, but it's UNC ... and this could possibly be our last game of the year. I think if Rodon has a few innings in him, we go down with our best.

6/20/2013 8:59:56 AM

6/20/2013 9:04:03 AM

There is no way we bring rodon out of the bullpen

we have a really deep pitching staff. If Stone cant get it done we have lots of other options.

Stone being a lefty against UNCs lefty dominated line up is a great matchup. If he does get into trouble though Avent needs to learn to yank his ass, unlike he did with Jernigan when he got in trouble.

6/20/2013 9:08:44 AM

Yeah, I don't want to see Rodon out of the pen. The guy threw 110 pitches on Sunday ... playing him tonight could potentially screw with his future (and really screw with our chances to advance). I think ideally, we'd get up by 2-3 runs by the fifth and turn to Wilkins and/or Easley to close it out. But desperate times call for desperate measures ... it's UNC ... and there is this:

Quote :

"Andrew Carter @_andrewcarter State coach Elliott Avent said earlier today that Rodon has told him twice he can pitch tomorrow. Didn't rule out using him. Won't start."

[Edited on June 20, 2013 at 9:26 AM. Reason : ]

6/20/2013 9:11:33 AM

If we see Rodon today then Avent is a moron. We need to win three games to advance, not one.

6/20/2013 9:15:22 AM

Stone with Ogburn waiting in the wings if things go wrong before the 6th inning.

i don't anticipate even seeing Rodon stretching in the bullpen for this game but to be honest we are in survive and advance mode right now.

6/20/2013 9:18:55 AM

but, to play devils advocate, this is an elimination game and you have to pull out all the stops

there will be folks calling him a moron if we lose and he didn't put Rodon on the mound

6/20/2013 9:18:58 AM

ValvanoU, Survive and Advance

6/20/2013 9:21:51 AM

I have to agree that if we need him, bring Rodon out of the pen. The other 2 games are not guaranteed. We have to win. And if part of that plan is to bring him in, then do it. Worry about the rest of the games when we get to them. If we win and then lose tomorrow, then that is the way it goes. We beat UNC twice in the CWS and sent their ass home.

6/20/2013 9:25:28 AM

If Rodon came in today and pitched an inning or two, could he start on Saturday?

If so, I say use him, especially if we go into the eighth with a lead. It will be so demoralizing for UNC just to see him walk on the field.

6/20/2013 9:34:13 AM

It depends on the amount of pitches he would throw.

If its a small amount 20 or so, its the same as a bullpen session.

I still dont LIKE the idea of using Rodon but if its a tie game or we are up 3-2 in the 8th or something and Ogburn cant do the job...hell, bring him in.

I'd ideally like to see us beat UNC with Stone and then pitch Rodon against UCLA and give them some of their own pitching medicine.

6/20/2013 9:47:46 AM

Oh I completely agree. Love to win, throw Rodon tomorrow, destroy them, and get some momentum going and take another from the Saturday. But if the season is on the line and Rodon gives the best chance to win, I say throw him.

6/20/2013 9:49:58 AM

Let us get ahead of ourselves here...

lets say we win tonight, pitch Rodon Saturday...then do we throw Jernigan again Sunday??

Im tempted to think Sunday would be a pitch by committee type of deal.

6/20/2013 9:54:49 AM

Probably Jernigan on a 5 inning leash again. which is fine IF we make it that far.


Tonight is the most important game of the year. If we can make it out of this without too much wear on the bullpen i'll feel much better about sneaking two out from UCLA.

but i won't even look past it. TONIGHT we send UNC home for good.

6/20/2013 10:01:41 AM

Games are Friday and Saturday, not Saturday/Sunday. But I don't think throwing Jernigan would be a bad thing. I mean yea he already lost to UCLA, but its not like he pitched bad. He did a good job. But then the other side is the batters just saw him and would get familiar with him and hit him better. Tough call.

6/20/2013 10:01:57 AM

Quote :

"If we see Rodon today then Avent is a moron. We need to win three games to advance, not one."

And then we would have to play a best of 3 series that is Monday to Wednesday of next week

He should be starting today

6/20/2013 10:10:29 AM

Rodon's been pitching on week-long rest normally. I can't imagine he'd be nearly as effective on half of that. Look at Kent Emmanuel, dude was a total wreck when we played him.

6/20/2013 10:15:46 AM

record for most relief pitchers in CWS will be broken tonight

6/20/2013 10:21:18 AM

Kent Emmanuel threw 61 pitches in relief on 1 day of rest

Rodon would be going on 3, which is something MLB teams do all the time in the playoffs.

I'm not saying it's ideal or even the greatest thing to do for his future but if you don't pitch him today you're looking at the same decision in the final series. And you're insane if you don't think we'd find a way to have him pitch then.

[Edited on June 20, 2013 at 10:22 AM. Reason : s]

6/20/2013 10:22:06 AM

Admittedly this is from a two year old article, but:

Since 2005, 21 pitchers have headed for the mound on short rest in the postseason. Here's how that's gone:

• Their combined ERA in those starts is 5.83.

• Their won-loss record is 5-8.

MLB teams may do it but doesn't mean it's a good idea.

[Edited on June 20, 2013 at 10:31 AM. Reason : Just wanted to clarify that those are MLB stats, not CWS]

6/20/2013 10:26:28 AM

He's 20 years old. His arm will be fine. I say ride your horse as hard as you can then let him recoup in the offseason. I'm not ready for this season to be over [/selfish]

6/20/2013 10:27:42 AM

Just win baby. I don't care how it happens; just win today and sort it all out after that. And I know this is some negative thinking, but we were preseason #8. There are 5 teams left right now. So no matter what we didn't under achieve. With that said we are talented enough to win Monday and Tuesday.

[Edited on June 20, 2013 at 10:28 AM. Reason : ]

6/20/2013 10:27:59 AM

I just feel like college coaches abuse their pitchers all the time. Don't potentially mess with the kid's future just to win a game that won't even advance you to the next round.

6/20/2013 10:35:38 AM

No they don't.

6/20/2013 10:36:27 AM

Don't think it's been posted yet, but here's a really good read on John Ward from yesterday's N&O (http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/19/2976037/nc-state-honors-longtime-fan-with.html):

Quote :

"OMAHA, NEB. — John Ward always dreamed of following his beloved N.C. State Wolfpack to Omaha, Neb., and the College World Series. It took 10 years after his death for that dream to come true. Elliott Avent, the N.C. State baseball coach, arrived here last week carrying his own hopes and dreams, and those of his players. He also brought some of Ward’s ashes, encased in glass. “I’ll take it to the dugout when we play,” Avent said. “He would have wanted to be here, so he’s going to be.” For the longest time, Ward knew where he wanted his ashes to go after he died. He asked his wife to take some to the mountains and sprinkle them on the soil of their church retreat outside of Asheville. Others were to be taken to Doak Field, home of the N.C. State baseball team, where Ward had spent hundreds of afternoons and nights blowing his familiar duck call, giving the umpires grief and cheering on the Wolfpack, game after game, season after season, for more than 50 years until he died in 2003. What would Ward, the most fanatic of all Wolfpack baseball fans, have to say now that N.C. State is in Omaha? What would following the Wolfpack to the College World Series have meant to him? “That’s almost indescribable,” his widow, Kate Ward, said earlier this week. “Because he waited so many years for this. And I think that’s the reason why everybody still talks about him. “He was always there for games whether anybody else was or not.” Part of the program Kate Ward will be 90 in January. N.C. State wanted to put her on the plane to Omaha with the Wolfpack, but she doesn’t get around too well these days. So she has watched the College World Series from home in Raleigh. She went out to the team sendoff last week before the Wolfpack boarded a bus to the airport. She called over Avent, the N.C. State coach, as if he were a son. They hugged, and she said she was proud of him. “My players used to go rake (their) leaves, and she’d feed them in the old days when that was legal, (when) you could do that,” Avent said. “They adopted our team every year. They have been with us through thick and thin, pulling for us, crying when we lost, rejoicing when we won. “Mr. Ward couldn’t be with us, and this was his dream.” The story of how Kate Ward met her husband is like something from a black and white movie. She was a part of a chaperoned group of dancers who went to Fort Jackson, in Columbia, S.C., “to be with the soldiers,” she said. And he was back from the war, where he’d served in Europe. It was 1944. “He was a tall, good-looking guy, and a great dancer,” she said. “He danced his way through life.” John Ward was a passionate baseball fan already. He grew up in Williamston, east of Rocky Mount, and he’d take the train to Raleigh to watch N.C. State play, Kate Ward said. She was from Charleston, S.C., and didn’t know much about the game, but that was all right. John taught her. After the war, John went back to school and earned his engineering degree from N.C. State. He and his wife settled down and made a life. They became fixtures at N.C. State baseball games in the 1950s, with John always down close to the field in a seat where he could be heard. By players, and coaches. By umpires. John was tough on umpires but on nobody else, really. When he died, the funeral was more celebration than mourning. “I don’t think he had any enemies in the world, except Carolina people, maybe, and probably a few umpires with rabbit years,” said Bob Kennel, who played baseball at N.C. State in 1950s. The Wards were already friends with Kennel’s parents, and Kennel became close to the Wards over the years, too. So did generations of other Wolfpack baseball players. When Kennel played, John hadn’t started bringing the duck call to games. No one is quite sure when that tradition started, or how, but eventually John brought the duck call to every game. He’d blow it when the Wolfpack had runners on base – ducks on the pond, the old baseball saying goes – and the noise became such a presence that they still play a duck call over the public address system at N.C. State games. Every now and then, at a road game, or maybe an NCAA tournament game, someone tried to silence the quacking. “And so he would blow it just in spite,” Kate said. “And once in a while, he got reprimanded.” If it wasn’t the duck call, it was the sayings. John was famous for his sayings. He had one he shouted every time a Wolfpack pitcher struck out a batter. Mike Prochaska, a pitcher who played on the last N.C. State team Ward watched, can still hear it when he thinks back to those days. “If we struck a guy out,” Prochaska said, “he would yell out, ‘Just like the barbershop! Next man!’ He said that after every strikeout. That was a classic Mr. Ward quote.” Together again, in Omaha N.C. State began to renovate Doak Field in 2002, and some renovations were ongoing when John threw out the first pitch at the first game there in 2003. He was sick then. Cancer had weakened him. “It had gotten all in his bone structure, and he was just really near death at that time,” Kate said. “But he went out there and threw the ball.” In his final months, John carried on like he always did. He went to games. He harassed the umpires. He blew the duck calls. And yes, he dreamed that fantastical dream of the Wolfpack making it to Omaha. John was already a longtime Wolfpack fan when they reached the College World Series in 1968, but he and Kate couldn’t go. He wasn’t yet the financial success that he would become after helping found Watco Corp., an HVAC company in Garner, in 1972. “It wasn’t in the budget,” Kate said. John always hoped that N.C. State would go back, hoping he would be there when the Wolfpack did. After his death, Kate held onto John’s ashes. For years, she couldn’t bring herself to spread them around Doak Field, the way he wanted. “It took me a long time,” she said. “Because I know the field is dragged, and one thing or another. It was something that I couldn’t bring myself to do, until finally four or five years ago – maybe more than that now – I decided we’d do something.” One day at dusk John’s family and friends and minister gathered for a ceremony at Doak. They spread his ashes behind home plate, not far from the place where so many umpires had endured so many of his complaints. Kate thought it was fitting, she said, “Because he was such a loudmouth with officials. And everybody said well now they better watch out because they’ll be hearing voices from the dead.” There were still more ashes, and Kate wanted her children to have some – a reminder of their father. Kate has a son-in-law who is a professional glassblower, and so she came up with the idea to encase her husband’s ashes in a clear glass paperweight. When it came back from the furnace, the ashes had crystallized into a brilliant white formation. “In your body you have sodium, and in the ashes are sodium – and when it hits the hot furnace, like a glass blower has to have – it crystallizes,” Kate said. “There’s never been anything like it, I don’t think, because if you saw it, you wouldn’t know what it is.” What it is, though, is a piece of John. Which is why Avent asked to have one of the paperweights. He carried it with him halfway across the country, to the one town where John wanted to see the Wolfpack play more than any other. “That’s almost indescribable,” Kate said. “Because coach is like a son.” When Avent arrived in Omaha last week, he kept the glass with John’s ashes inside a case in his hotel room. He planned to bring it to the dugout every day when the Wolfpack played. John Ward has been gone now for 10 years, but a piece of him is where he always wanted to be – in Omaha with the Wolfpack at the College World Series."

6/20/2013 10:37:11 AM

That's an impressive collection of words

6/20/2013 10:43:38 AM

If we don't pitch him today I'm fine with it. I disagree, but I'm fine with it.

If he comes in after Stone and pitches relief it will be an atrocious decision, however.

6/20/2013 10:44:59 AM

I think the focus needs to be more on figuring out how to put up a few runs instead of worrying about who is pitching.

6/20/2013 11:00:12 AM

Quote :

"If we don't pitch him today I'm fine with it. I disagree, but I'm fine with it."

exactly.

6/20/2013 11:46:30 AM

Save him for tomorrow. It's carolina right? Aren't we like a billion and 1 against these guys? Why waste Rodon's talent against them. Gotta be ready for those hot bats of the bruins.

6/20/2013 3:11:27 PM

i'd rather use rodon to eliminate carolina and forget about the rest of the tournament. that's a job worth doing.

6/20/2013 3:14:20 PM

^ Exactly. If Carolina eliminates us it will invalidate all positive feelings I may have had about this CWS trip.

6/20/2013 3:28:55 PM

you are a moron. would you have rather us wait 69 years to go and hope UNC wasn't in the CWS with us?


it's people like you who join the bandwagon on June 3rd and fail to see what kind of boost a single trip to the CWS does for a team. National exposure, recruitment, university support. If we get beat by UNC it'll sting like hell but what a season it's been including a heart breaking marathon loss, a nerve racking marathon win, punching a ticket to something for the first time in 68 years and having arguably the most dominant pitcher in the nation. And to face your most bitter rival on the national stage not once, but twice? How awesome is that?

and you think it's all invalidated because we get eliminated by UNC? this isn't the first round of the ACCT. this is a week into the College World Series where 5 teams are left.

and here is something else you probably don't know having only paid attention for the last 17 days. Our team is young. We lose Senay and Williams out of the starting 8 and that's it. The core is back, Rodon is back. We have what it takes to make it back to Omaha next year.

6/20/2013 3:51:32 PM

^ yup.

6/20/2013 4:09:25 PM

can't pitch Rodon today. His career means more than (maybe)winning a game. We have to win games without him anyways, might as well start now.

Also, major league teams my use guys on 3 days rest in the playoffs...however Rodon is on a 6 day rest routine, not 4 or 5 like major league arms are used to. His arm is still recovering and getting back to normal.

6/20/2013 4:10:22 PM

Maybe UNC won't make the CWS next year. Then we'll win for sure.

6/20/2013 4:13:40 PM

I mean UNC is the 1 seed so I would assume that we'd want to use Rodon on them regardless because they're the best team of the ones we'd have to face this weekend.

However, I don't think he's rested enough even if he believes he is - it would not be an automatic repeat of the last game we had with them. I say use the lefty and hope for the best.

We should have never been in this situation, though.

[Edited on June 20, 2013 at 4:53 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2013 4:52:17 PM

Quote :

" Our team is young. We lose Senay and Williams out of the starting 8 and that's it."

No. Adametz and Clyde are gone too. 4 of the 8.

6/20/2013 4:53:57 PM

we will have new corner infielders and outfielders next year...as well as a new bullpen. Fincher will move to Center.

6/20/2013 4:57:39 PM