RE: CAA Tournament
Despite the disappointing way NU ended the season, its was still a good year.
They got to experience what it's like to be the hunted in this tourney and now they know what to expect.
Thanks to Cam Hanley, Max Burt, Mike Fitzgerald, Pat Madigan, Nick Fanneron, Jimmy Hand, Nate Borges, David Hopkins and Will Jahn for their time at NU.
But as good as most of them were, they can be replaced.
SS Max Burt might be the toughest because of his defense, but NU has Ian Fair who Glavine redshirted and really likes. NU will have to make due with his errors but I think he'll be a good one next year.
1B Cam Hanley's production will be missed, but last year when he missed most of the year with an injury, Jake Farrell filled in admirably and will be expect to pick up the slack.
Brian Christian will be our Friday ace. After him we have RHP Kyle Murphy, RHP Dave Steihl, RHP Tom Githens, LHP Sean Mellen and LHP Andrew Misaiszek to fill in the last two weekend slots and midweek.
Steihl, Githens and Mellen, all freshman, made midweek starts. Steihl was our Saturday starter for half of the season.
Misaiszek has to bounce back from a bad year. He just wasn't good as a starter this year after doing a nice job his freshman year.
But I like our starting pitching.
Ty Robinson is another who needs to bounce back. He started this year as the closer and raced out to convert six saves then his control issues arose. Too many walks and wild pitches chased Glavine to lose faith in him (can't blame him either) and he got buried the last month and a half of the year.
Tyler Brown was pretty solid and will get better and Brian RodrÃguez was good for most of the year as a freshman but at times had control issues too late in the year.
I'm still trying to figure out how C John Mazza played went to Maryland. He was an automatic out for a majority of the year and his average was below the Mendoza line. He and Mason Koppens weak hitting kill our lineup. I know Glavine likes their defense which is the only reason why they, start but it's tough to watch. Koppens did get hot during our 4 week home stand , but they went cold the rest of the year. IMO I don't think either one do anything special defensively. That being said, if they both play well this summer, maybe they can change it around for the senior seasons.
We have two other catchers that I think are talented. Michael Geaslen and redshirt freshman Teddy Beaudet.
Next years schedule should be much fairer. We played way too many away games. I asked Glavine why months ago and he said it's wasn't planned and he wasn't happy with the schedule either. He tried to get Cincinnati to come to Brookline for a 3-game series and they declined, so we ended going out there instead. He still wants to get a series with a bigger program to come to us, but it's going to be hard. NU will open the year playing a series at a Power 5 team, but he said the 2018 schedule will be better.
We'll still probably be picked in the middle of the pack or lower next year because we lost 9 seniors (all replaceable IMO) but I really like what we have coming back and the direction the program is headed.
(This post was last modified: 05-28-2017 01:36 PM by geewizNU.)
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