What a game. While the Commodores got down and looked lethargic early, they were able to hang in there, and ultimately grit out a 8-7 win in 13 innings against the #3 Illinois State Red Birds to advance to the winner's bracket of the Louisville Regional. The Commodores will play the winner of the #1 Louisville vs. #4 St. Louis game tomorrow at 3 central.
While risky, it appears the Tim Corbin's decision to start Taylor Hill was the right one. Vanderbilt, who used 5 pitchers today, can hand the ball to their ace, who, in 14 starts, has pitched 7 innings or more 8 times. Certainly, whomever the Commodores face, they'll need Gray to go deep into the game.
Vanderbilt's 1-6 hitters were responsible for 12 of the Commodores 15 base hits, and all 8 of their runs. With that said, the Commodores stranded 17 base runners, and were unimpressive with runners in scoring position (since the box score doesn't break it down, I have no idea how bad, so you'll have to settle for my half-cocked speculation). Still, they advanced and will play tomorrow at 3pm. VSL will be live-blogging again and hope VSLNation will join us.
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I have tickets to all of the games in the Louisville regional and I will be cheering on the Commodores live and in person.
As far as stranding runners goes, we literally left runners on base in all but one inning of the entire 13 inning game. We drew tons of walks, got solid singles and doubles, but we couldn't hardly plate any of them, and it was supremely frustrating. Any other day, we likely would have scored 15-17 runs, but the Redbirds had our number and kept us from scoring.
We're going to need to be more efficient against the Cardinals, who put on an offensive clinic against the Billikens. They made it look easy and had the game wrapped up early and only used a pair of pitchers. They're also playing without their head coach who is serving a three-game suspension.
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