Projo Sports Blog

Since it's college baseball, and the game didn't end 'til the wee hours of Sunday morning, many people may not be aware of some of the amazing things that happened in Texas' 25-inning, 7 hours and 3 minutes marathon, 3-2 victory over Boston College in the NCAA regional in Austin.

How about the fact that the Longhorns' Austin Wood, who came out of the bullpen in the seventh, pitched 12 innings of no-hit ball and got neither the win, nor the save?

Apparently, pitch counts mean nothing in Texas, because Wood threw the incredible total of 169 pitches. What makes that number even more remarkable is that, only the day before, he'd thrown 30 pitches in a relief appearance against Army.

Shouldn't Texas coach Augie Garrido have taken him out much sooner?

"(Pitching coach) Skip Johnson and I were talking about when he should come out," Garrido said. "(Wood) walked by and said: 'I'm not coming out of the game.' "

That Wood is gutsy, and the type of pitcher any team would love to have, goes without queston. But you certainly can question Garrido not taking responsibility for the kid's arm -- and possible future in baseball -- by taking the ball away from him before his pitch count grew unconscionably high.

While not comparable to Woods' amazing performance, BC reliever Mike Belfiore racked up 9-2/3 scoreless innings, allowing only three of Texas' 20 hits, and striking out 11. Wood, by the way, fanned 14.

What was not surprising is that the tired Eagles were eliminated from the tournament Sunday afternoon by Army, 4-3.

The Cadets then took on the Longhorns, who didn't wake up until the ninth inning, when they scored eight runs -- the final four on a walkoff grand slam -- to pull out a 14-10 victory and advance to the College World Series.

"I've never been part of anything like that," BC coach Mik Aoki told the Boston Globe. "But then, I guess, no one else has. It was almost surreal."

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.