Although it has not officially clinched a spot in the AAC tournament, Tulane realistically will finish anywhere from second to sixth. It is one game behind USF and FAU while losing the tiebreaker to both, also a game behind Charlotte, which it hosts to end the year, and tied with ECU, which it beats in a tiebreaker.
There are two keys down the stretch. The first is finding reliable pitchers in a year when the ERA is straight-up awful, the third worst in program history behind 1990 and 2023. Uhlman said today he would like to have eight pitchers he could use in the conference tournament. Luc Fladda, who has been bad most of the year but proved in Corvallis last year he could come up big under pressure, and Trey Cehajic, who has been mediocre, have to be two of them. Michael Lombardi, who has been brilliant, and Tayler Montiel, who was terrific for most of the year before sliding, have the makeup and the stuff to be counted on heavily. Blaise Wilcenski, who was outstanding last week but never good before then, and Carter Benbrook, who has a lot of savvy but only average stuff, need to become reliable. Jacob Moore, who has been inexplicably bad with a loss of control this year, has to find his form, and someone else needs to be the eighth. Maybe that's Will Clements, who has excellent stuff but has never been reliable in two years, or Julius Ejike-Charles, whom the coaches like but has not impressed me, or Grayson Smith, who was god-awful as a touted transfer from Florida before pitching really well in relief on Saturday.
The other key is avoiding the 4th or 5th seed. Yeah, I know UTSA dropped two in a row as the top seed (No. 2 overall) in Tulane's half of the bracket last year, but that team is the class of the league this season and is a horrendous matchup for Tulane's pitchers because of the way it rakes. Get the Roadrunners on the other half of the bracket and hope they get eliminated or run out of pitching by the championship game, when they will not have the same motivation as an at-large lock anyway. That means finishing 6th would be much better than 4th or 5th, although 2nd or 3rd is obviously preferable because Tulane would enter the tournament with more confidence.
No team other than UTSA is remotely scary, but the problem for Tulane will be winning that first game. Fladda has not pitched as well as any other team's ace, and Tulane is nowhere near good enough on the mound to come out of the losers' bracket. I do like Tulane's chances if it finds a way to win the first game. The hitting has been quite good for more than a month, with no holes in the lineup, and once you get past the opponent's ace, no one has elite pitching in this league.
Memphis will play with a lot of desperation this weekend under Matt Riser. After starting 0-8 in the league, the Tigers are 7-6 even though they got swept by UTSA in that span. They have plenty of incentive to do well this weekend since they are tied for the final spot in the tournament with Wichita State and UAB. Thankfully for Tulane, they are the worst hitting team in the league by a long way (Tulane is dead last in ERA by a long way during conference play), but the Wave lost a series on the road to an even worse hitting team in Pepperdine.
Uhlman talked today, and he offered good news about Lombardi, who missed Saturday and Sunday with a strained oblique. Without a healthy Lombardi on the mound in Clearwater, Tulane would be toast.
On Memphis being a tricky opponent:
"They are on their first four-game winning streak of the year (becoming the first AAC team to sweep UAB and beating a garbage SWAC team) and are feeling good about it. They beat a good Friday night starter in UAB's Colin Daniel, the preseason selection for pitcher of the year. They are going to play hard. Coach Riser does a great job, and I know he's trying to get that thing going in the right direction. They might be fighting for their lives, but so are we. At this point of the year we're all fighting for our lives."
On Memphis Friday starter Seth Garner one-hitting Tulane over five innings last year:
"Tongue in cheek, we had finals last year when we played them. In all seriousness, he throws fastball-change to left-handers and fastball-slider to right-handers. He was able to locate and pitch really well. It's like everything else. It's a Friday night matchup, and we're going to have to be up to the task and score runs."
On Memphis being light-hitting team:
"The good news is offensively we're starting to trend in a better direction that gives us more ammunition and bullets and protection than maybe we got in the middle part of the year or even the beginning part of the year. That part helps. This is the time of year the ball starts flying. Their park can play very offensive depending on which way the wind's blowing. Really positive steps forward. Trey (Cehajic) getting back out there for a good spin on Saturday this past weekend. He would have probably gone longer had he gotten an out on the one bunt when we were up 7-1. It cost him more pitches and more hitters and the compound effect of that. He had a pretty good outing from the two times before that, and then Blaise has been tremendous the last three times. We get Lombardi back, so we'll have some things working for us and some guys doing some better things as we move into May."
On if Lombardi is cleared to hit and pitch:
"We'll see. Our hope is that he'll be fully ready to go. I'm speaking that a little bit more into existence than probably a firm mandate that he's back, but my expectation is for him to be back in some capacity."
On losing FAU series:
"Game 2 we were in totally command, but as you look back on it, we left 16 on (base) and when a team comes from behind, it's not just the things that led up to the big blow, which was the grand slam, but it's all the other things behind that--the defensive plays or lack thereof, maybe one got away, we didn't collect certain outs, we didn't turn a few double plays, those kinds of things. Then leaving meat on the bone from an offensive standpoint. All those things could have changed the complexion of the game. We're staring at being up 7-1 and I'm thinking like all right, let's get this into 10-run range and call it a day, and the next thing you know they kind of just chipped away at us. You've got to give credit where credit's due. They hung in there, and we weren't able to put the bow on the present. Friday was just a strange deal. We didn't start off the way we wanted to, but we kept battling and we got it close several times, and Grayson Smith came back in the resumption of that game 1 and pitched really well for us. I'd like to see him take that success and build on that and any other opportunities that he gets."
On what he wants to see from pitching staff moving forward:
"Here's what I would tell you. I think every year if you look at pitching staffs across the country, you could pick out the stats and look at the top eight pitchers, top nine pitchers, and usually it's the bulk that's going to be getting the vast majority of the opportunities (at the tournament) as we move down the stretch. Had we used eight guys strictly for the past two months, they'd be out of gas. We've had a track record the last couple of years where we've played our best down the stretch. We've gotten to postseason play and been able to maneuver through very tricky tournaments. Winning is hard, but winning tournaments is really difficult. For us, to be able to take care of our top end arms, to allow us to be in a better position at the end of the year is good. You are going to take some lumps. When you're out there and if Luc goes out there and has a tough one or one of the starting pitchers goes out and has a tough one, you have an obligation of not throwing in the towel so to speak, but how do we not use the guys that we know we need to use to get the series win, and when you're using the back end of your staff, a lot of times it's hold your breath and hope and pray and sometimes it's a bag of snakes. You don't get bit and sometimes you get bit. Unfortunately for the young people in that position, they want that opportunity and they're trying, but sometimes the try an the over-analyzation of what they need to do sometimes gets in the way and affects production and performance, but in terms of the bulk group of guys that we've had that have been productive, I'm happy with where they are. I feel like that group of guys gives us the best chance to get us where we need to go, which is Sunday in Clearwater."
There are two keys down the stretch. The first is finding reliable pitchers in a year when the ERA is straight-up awful, the third worst in program history behind 1990 and 2023. Uhlman said today he would like to have eight pitchers he could use in the conference tournament. Luc Fladda, who has been bad most of the year but proved in Corvallis last year he could come up big under pressure, and Trey Cehajic, who has been mediocre, have to be two of them. Michael Lombardi, who has been brilliant, and Tayler Montiel, who was terrific for most of the year before sliding, have the makeup and the stuff to be counted on heavily. Blaise Wilcenski, who was outstanding last week but never good before then, and Carter Benbrook, who has a lot of savvy but only average stuff, need to become reliable. Jacob Moore, who has been inexplicably bad with a loss of control this year, has to find his form, and someone else needs to be the eighth. Maybe that's Will Clements, who has excellent stuff but has never been reliable in two years, or Julius Ejike-Charles, whom the coaches like but has not impressed me, or Grayson Smith, who was god-awful as a touted transfer from Florida before pitching really well in relief on Saturday.
The other key is avoiding the 4th or 5th seed. Yeah, I know UTSA dropped two in a row as the top seed (No. 2 overall) in Tulane's half of the bracket last year, but that team is the class of the league this season and is a horrendous matchup for Tulane's pitchers because of the way it rakes. Get the Roadrunners on the other half of the bracket and hope they get eliminated or run out of pitching by the championship game, when they will not have the same motivation as an at-large lock anyway. That means finishing 6th would be much better than 4th or 5th, although 2nd or 3rd is obviously preferable because Tulane would enter the tournament with more confidence.
No team other than UTSA is remotely scary, but the problem for Tulane will be winning that first game. Fladda has not pitched as well as any other team's ace, and Tulane is nowhere near good enough on the mound to come out of the losers' bracket. I do like Tulane's chances if it finds a way to win the first game. The hitting has been quite good for more than a month, with no holes in the lineup, and once you get past the opponent's ace, no one has elite pitching in this league.
Memphis will play with a lot of desperation this weekend under Matt Riser. After starting 0-8 in the league, the Tigers are 7-6 even though they got swept by UTSA in that span. They have plenty of incentive to do well this weekend since they are tied for the final spot in the tournament with Wichita State and UAB. Thankfully for Tulane, they are the worst hitting team in the league by a long way (Tulane is dead last in ERA by a long way during conference play), but the Wave lost a series on the road to an even worse hitting team in Pepperdine.
Uhlman talked today, and he offered good news about Lombardi, who missed Saturday and Sunday with a strained oblique. Without a healthy Lombardi on the mound in Clearwater, Tulane would be toast.
On Memphis being a tricky opponent:
"They are on their first four-game winning streak of the year (becoming the first AAC team to sweep UAB and beating a garbage SWAC team) and are feeling good about it. They beat a good Friday night starter in UAB's Colin Daniel, the preseason selection for pitcher of the year. They are going to play hard. Coach Riser does a great job, and I know he's trying to get that thing going in the right direction. They might be fighting for their lives, but so are we. At this point of the year we're all fighting for our lives."
On Memphis Friday starter Seth Garner one-hitting Tulane over five innings last year:
"Tongue in cheek, we had finals last year when we played them. In all seriousness, he throws fastball-change to left-handers and fastball-slider to right-handers. He was able to locate and pitch really well. It's like everything else. It's a Friday night matchup, and we're going to have to be up to the task and score runs."
On Memphis being light-hitting team:
"The good news is offensively we're starting to trend in a better direction that gives us more ammunition and bullets and protection than maybe we got in the middle part of the year or even the beginning part of the year. That part helps. This is the time of year the ball starts flying. Their park can play very offensive depending on which way the wind's blowing. Really positive steps forward. Trey (Cehajic) getting back out there for a good spin on Saturday this past weekend. He would have probably gone longer had he gotten an out on the one bunt when we were up 7-1. It cost him more pitches and more hitters and the compound effect of that. He had a pretty good outing from the two times before that, and then Blaise has been tremendous the last three times. We get Lombardi back, so we'll have some things working for us and some guys doing some better things as we move into May."
On if Lombardi is cleared to hit and pitch:
"We'll see. Our hope is that he'll be fully ready to go. I'm speaking that a little bit more into existence than probably a firm mandate that he's back, but my expectation is for him to be back in some capacity."
On losing FAU series:
"Game 2 we were in totally command, but as you look back on it, we left 16 on (base) and when a team comes from behind, it's not just the things that led up to the big blow, which was the grand slam, but it's all the other things behind that--the defensive plays or lack thereof, maybe one got away, we didn't collect certain outs, we didn't turn a few double plays, those kinds of things. Then leaving meat on the bone from an offensive standpoint. All those things could have changed the complexion of the game. We're staring at being up 7-1 and I'm thinking like all right, let's get this into 10-run range and call it a day, and the next thing you know they kind of just chipped away at us. You've got to give credit where credit's due. They hung in there, and we weren't able to put the bow on the present. Friday was just a strange deal. We didn't start off the way we wanted to, but we kept battling and we got it close several times, and Grayson Smith came back in the resumption of that game 1 and pitched really well for us. I'd like to see him take that success and build on that and any other opportunities that he gets."
On what he wants to see from pitching staff moving forward:
"Here's what I would tell you. I think every year if you look at pitching staffs across the country, you could pick out the stats and look at the top eight pitchers, top nine pitchers, and usually it's the bulk that's going to be getting the vast majority of the opportunities (at the tournament) as we move down the stretch. Had we used eight guys strictly for the past two months, they'd be out of gas. We've had a track record the last couple of years where we've played our best down the stretch. We've gotten to postseason play and been able to maneuver through very tricky tournaments. Winning is hard, but winning tournaments is really difficult. For us, to be able to take care of our top end arms, to allow us to be in a better position at the end of the year is good. You are going to take some lumps. When you're out there and if Luc goes out there and has a tough one or one of the starting pitchers goes out and has a tough one, you have an obligation of not throwing in the towel so to speak, but how do we not use the guys that we know we need to use to get the series win, and when you're using the back end of your staff, a lot of times it's hold your breath and hope and pray and sometimes it's a bag of snakes. You don't get bit and sometimes you get bit. Unfortunately for the young people in that position, they want that opportunity and they're trying, but sometimes the try an the over-analyzation of what they need to do sometimes gets in the way and affects production and performance, but in terms of the bulk group of guys that we've had that have been productive, I'm happy with where they are. I feel like that group of guys gives us the best chance to get us where we need to go, which is Sunday in Clearwater."
