I think the Zona coach and Mike Lotief came from the same school. Delay after delay after delay. Its obviously more common in softball but Mike is still an outlier. Zona is definitely an outlier for baseball. I don't ever recall seeing any other team in 30 years do more to slow a game down than they did. Exact opposite of how Tony runs a game. I should have kept track of how many times their infield met at the mound, coach goes to the mound, catcher come out from behind the plate to change signs, 3rd base coach timeout to talk to batter, taking the field extremely slowly.
I've played and followed a lot of baseball... and "urgency" was never a term considered. "Urgency" is a fan feeling. "We had better start doing something, or we're going to lose.". The men in the trenches were doing what they could. It was Arizona's day. Hats off to them.
You are right. But Arizona's coach probably decided early on to help interrupt our fan advantage. Tony never had a reason to disrupt our pitching staff. It has worked pretty well just to let Thurman keep the pitchers on their rythmn. I really never saw a time that Tony should have interrupted the game. I doubt the Arizona coach would have done that had the regional been in Arizona.
I agree. Arizona pitched themselves into the Supers, I'm not arguing that. It's was the lack of urgency that Tony had the better pitcher, Guillory's SBC tourney appearance not included, in Marks and chose to ride Guillory and hope for the best because he thought we could get into their pen and exhaust their arms. Way too conservative a strategy and putting Marks out there would have possibly yielded a better result, i.e., less than a 6 run deficit to overcome, which odds were very favorable to to. Now losing Game 6, losing the driver seat in the regional, and being flummoxed at the plate by a guy on two game's rest...all that had to get in their heads. All that came from being passive, and thinking we could outlast their pitching, instead of putting the best we had available to put a roadblock on game 6 and not even think about game 7. Pitching in game 6 thinking about game 7 lost us this regional.
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