For baseball junkies, Friday marks a special day as the College World Series begins with two games, the first between the Louisville Cardinals (46-22) and Rice Owls (54-12) at 2 p.m. ET and North Carolina Tar Heels (53-13) vs. Mississippi State Bulldogs (38-20) follow at 7 p.m. from Rosenblat Stadium in Omaha, Neb. On Saturday, UC Irvine (45-15-1) takes on Arizona State (46-13) in the 2 p.m. game and Oregon State (44-18) begins defense of its 2006 CWS title against Cal State Fullerton (38-23) at 7 p.m. All CWS games will be televised on ESPN or ESPN2.
Online sportsbook Betus.com has installed odds on both Friday games. Saturday odds will be available early Saturday morning.
In Game-One, the Owls are solid -320 money line favorites over the Cardinals +240. North Carolina is a -280 odds favorite over Mississippi State at +210.
The Owls who won the CWS title in 2003, have struggled at the plate this post season scoring only 22 runs in five games. Pitching has been everything as Rice hurlers have struck out 48 batters in 46 postseason innings and are holding opponents to a .190 average. Bobby Bramhall h as 11 strikeouts and one hit allowed in 6 2/3 innings, while Matt Langwell is 2-0 with an ERA of 0.68 in two starts with 15 strikeouts in 13 1/3 frames.
While Rice made it to Omaha on its pitching , it’s safe to say Louisville made it on hitting. The Cardinals are hitting a torrid .363 in eight postseason games. Redshirt freshman third baseman Chris Dominguez has homered five time while batting .333. Designated hitter Jorge Castillo has knocked in 17 RBIs.
Louisville’s pitching carried was solid throughout the regular season but has struggled in the postseason. Starting pitchers James Belanger (6.14 ERA, 7 1/3 IP), Colby Wark (7.11 ERA in 6 ½ IP and Skylar Meade (7.50 ERA in 6 IP) need to be better when called upon in Omaha.
North Carolina has everything in place , hitting, bullpen, ace starting pitcher and experience to win this years CWS, but unlike last year, starting pitching is the biggest question mark. Starting pitchers have logged just 30 of North Carolina’s 53 innings pitched in the postseason. Righties Alex White and Luke Putkonen must go deeper and pitch better for the Tar Heels to repeat last year’s run to the championship series.
Mississippi State, probably the weakest team in the eight team CWS field is one of the hottest. After losing eight of its last 10 regular season games, they still managed to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. In the tournament they got hot. One interesting aspect to the Bulldogs is their last four games were against ACC teams, Florida State and Clemson, all wins, and the Bulldogs open with the ACC’s tournament champ, North Carolina.
The Bulldogs’ pitching is considered to be the weakest in the field with its 4.76 ERA.
