Pac 10 Sports Blog

In a surprising upset, Fresno State beat Arizona State, 12-9, on Monday to advance to the College World Series in Omaha Nebraska. The Bulldogs became the first No. 4 seed to advance to the World Series since the tournament expanded to a 64-team field in 1999.

In their game against ASU, the score was tied at 5 at the top of the seventh inning till Fresno State exploded for sixth runs. They added another run in the top of the ninth before Arizona State rallied for 4 runs in the bottom of the ninth to make the score seem closer than it was.

An odd footnote to the game, as reported by ESPN.com, was the “fight” that took place between Arizona State’s Ike Davis and Brett Wallace while the Sun Devils were taking their infield warm-ups 45 minutes before the game.

The two of them appeared to exchange words over a missed play and wrestled briefly in the infield.

Puzzlingly, Wallace and Davis are described as close friends.

When the team was asked about the incident after the game, Sun Devil Manager Pat Murphy explained it was supposed to be a joke. He explained further that the purpose of the “fight” was to loosen his team up after their deflating loss in their second game against Fresno. Murphy also added that the team did a similar stunt before a game against Coastal Carolina in 2005.

Whether it was fake or not, the Sun Devils are still heading home and the College World Series will begin this weekend without them. The first games take place on Saturday and Sunday in the double elimination tournament, but the final championship series doesn’t start till Monday, June 23.

Stanford stands as the only Pac-10 team still in the running, who face no. 4 overall seed Florida State on Saturday at 2 p.m. on ESPN. The Cardinal enter the game as winners of their last six games and eight out of their last 10. Florida State, on the other hand, scored 14 and 11 runs respectively in the final two games of their series against Wichita State after dropping the first game to the Shockers; a game in which they still scored 7 runs. In the final game of the series, FSU pounded Shockers’ ace, Anthony Capra, for six runs in the first inning before Capra could even get three outs. Capra had previously been undefeated this season.

Stanford, however, held no. 3-seeded Cal State Fullerton, a team that had scored 35 runs in five games in their regional, to three and five runs in the two games they played against them in the Super Regional.

It’ll certainly be an interesting match-up between Stanford’s pitching and Florida State’s hitting.

Knowing this about both teams, I expect Florida State to take the first game because hitting, for whatever reason, is usually more important than pitching when it comes to the College World Series. Now, the two are not playing a three game series, so Stanford will still have a shot against a team that offers a better match-up for Stanford.

Off the playing field, the Pac-10 received big news Monday when the Conference’s Commissioner, Tom Hansen, announced his intent to retire next summer. Hansen will step down on July 1, 2009 after 26 years as the Pac-10’s top dog, which is the longest tenure of any Division-I conference in the nation.

Hansen’s career has seen the football and basketball programs rise to prominence and Pac-10 teams have won 204 national championships during his tenure.

Of course, it is my opinion that the credit for these championships should go to the individual teams rather than a person who sits behind a desk all day. Otherwise, we might as well say that a city’s mayor is responsible for every “A” student’s earn in a school in that city.

However, this isn’t how I’ll remember Hansen’s body of work. I’ll remember how he perennially kept the Men’s Basketball tournament in Los Angeles even though there are NBA arenas in every state in the conference. I’ll remember how he kept the conference’s deal with Fox Sports Network rather than making a deal with ESPN for more national exposure, a move that has hindered the Heisman chances of any football player outside of Los Angeles and a move that has lessened the amount of Pac-10 teams that make the NCAA Men’s Basketball field each year. Finally, I’ll remember him most for his staunch support of the BCS (a system that has screwed the 2001 Ducks, 2003 Trojans, 2004 Bears, and 2005 Ducks, teams in his OWN CONFERENCE) and how he squashed talk of a playoff in college football at every opportunity.

For me, Hansen’s parting is just sweet and there is no sorrow.

As always, feel free to post comments with questions or concerns. I’d be curious to see what others think about the upcoming College World Series or Hansen’s retirement.

Until yesterday, there were three Pac-10 teams still alive in the Super Regional round of the NCAA Baseball Tournament. For those who don’t know, this is the sweet 16 in baseball and the winners of each three game series moves on to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska as one of the final eight teams remaining.

In an upset, Stanford swept Cal-State Fullerton, the fifth overall seed in the tournament and host to their series with Stanford, and are now one of the six teams that have already qualified for the eight team final.

Among the other six teams already in the College World Series is Miami (Fl.), the first overall seed, who had to struggle past a feisty Arizona team that took the first game of the three game series in 11 innings, 6-3. However, Miami, rated no. 1 in the nation at the end of the season in both the USA Today top 25 poll and Baseball America’s top 25, slugged out a win in game two, 14-10, and then finished the wildcats off with a 4-2 win yesterday.

The final Pac-10 team still alive in the tournament is Arizona State, the number three overall seed. Arizona State, also this season’s Pac-10 regular season champions and no. 4 in the nation at season’s end, dropped their second game against an upstart Fresno State team that they crushed in their first meeting. Fresno State is a team that was seeded fourth in their region and for those basketball fans out there, that’s like a 13-16 seed making it to the sweet sixteen. Their series is tied 1-1 heading into tonight’s third and final game with a spot in the college world series on the line.

I’d be surprised if Arizona State doesn’t crush Fresno State tonight because they have been superb throughout the season and have faced stiffer competition than Fresno State.

It’d be nice to see two Pac-10 teams in the college world series since the Pac-10 has been solid in baseball over the past few seasons. The conference got five teams in the tournament this year, and Oregon State had won the previous two tournaments before this one.

In other Pac-10 news, Wrestlers at Oregon filed a law suit on Friday in a court in Salem, Oregon to try and save their sport from being dropped as a Varsity sport in favor of Baseball next year.

According to an article on ESPN.com, the complaint filed was that the university mistakenly interpreted Title IX requirements when they dropped wrestling, a male sport.

Title IX is a little tricky in that universities can choose to either have an equal amount of varsity teams between men’s and women’s sports or equal scholarships for men and women athletes. I believe that the University of Oregon adheres to the former set of rules and so they needed to drop a men’s sport when they added baseball in order to still have a balanced amount of men’s and women’s teams. Also, the University is not completely balanced as of right now, so any change in terms of varsity athletics has to be seen as a move towards gender equality at the university. Otherwise they could face severe punishments from many more organizations much scarier than a handful of meaty wrestlers.

Personally, I live in Eugene and I think the wrestlers should just drop it. Nobody goes to wrestling and no one paid attention to it until it was dropped, at which point all the bleeding hearts in Eugene (and there are many) began singing wrestling’s praises.

The fact of the matter is that Baseball is better for the whole community. It will bring more money in and it allows the Eugene Emeralds to stay in the city when before the announcement, they were thinking about moving somewhere else in Oregon, where they could build their own new stadium.

Recently, this wrestling move (no pun intended) has been compared next to Arizona State’s move to drop wrestling to supposedly save money. However the two situations, like most sports comparisons, are too different to compare.

If any of you readers have more comments on this or other Pac-10 related stories, please comment on this post. Sports discussions are always the best way to receive sports news.