Day four at Disney made for a great day of baseball, minus the temperature.  At this point teams in the second round of the winner’s bracket were positioning themselves to win the next two games and stamp a ticket to the final 8.  Having your pitchers of choice available for substantial innings is hard to manage after the third round.  And teams fighting out of the loser’s bracket can’t misstep or they’ll have the rest of the week off. 

Our #5 team, Tomateros de California looked extremely impressive and took advantage of ranked and respected #21 VYAA Bomberz 17-4.  Having run ruled every opponent to this point; the Tomateros have pitched the fewest innings of any team in the tournament, a statistic that will have impact over the weekend.  Keeping our eyes on Tomateros, we might see the match up we want, as they’re in line to play our #1 Oklahoma Elite in the fifth round, barring any upsets.  The Tomateros beat our #7 O.C. Black Sox 10-2 in a four inning run ruled game this morning.
 
The Elite handily beat #17 American Avengers III 7-1 behind 5 shutdown innings from Keone Givens.  This set them up to play tournament surprise team Lamorinda Monarchs.  The Elite handled business this morning giving the Monarchs their first loss of the tournament 9-0.   Corey Zangori pitched in his third game of the tournament going 5 shutout innings. 

Staying with the winner’s bracket, but switching to Pool B, the game of the day might be #19 Banditos Black (TX) against #10 West Pines Nike Cobras (FL).  Since suffering a first game 8-0 run ruling by #5 Tomateros, the Nike Cobras have run ruled their first two bracket game opponents by the same score.  This game puts the winner in the driver’s seat to win the pool’s bracket.  The bottom half has two Texas undefeated (Stixx & Texas Nationals Team), and #21 Mac-N-Seitz Indians club set to eliminate each other before they’d face the Cobras/Banditos Black winner.  But the winner of loser’s bracket game between #13 Central Florida Bobcats and Alabama Senators will play the Banditos Black/Cobras loser.  It’s the second bracket match up for the Senators and Bobcats.  The Bobcats won the first game 13-4.

The Detroit Bee’s have been eliminated after giving us two exciting pool play games, both victories for the Bees.  Unfortunately seems they ran out of gas, losing both bracket games.  The first a 13-1 lopsided game against Texas Nationals Team and the final blow a 13-11 shootout with the Pensacola Aqua Sox.  Others who are done playing include the Greenville Titans, Lehigh Valley Stealth and Charlotte Megastars.    

But the biggest surprise of the week, #9 Most Feared (TX) has been bounced out losing two consecutive games after receiving a first round bye.  Back to back loses at the hands of underdog Lamorinda Monarachs (CA) & Avengers III Red (TX) respectfully.  Neither of the two teams earned a berth through winning or placing runner up in any Super NIT events this season.  Both were given at large invitations.  A tough pill for Most Feared to swallow; they went undefeated in Governor’s Games Super NIT to qualify for the Elite 24.  GG was arguably the toughest Super NIT of the season.  We expected that momentum to carry over to the Texas USSSA State Championship tournament but it didn’t.  Inconsistency has been a pattern with most Texas teams this season but we attributed it to the many strong teams wouldn’t allow a team to separate from the pack.  But at this point in the season you can’t play that “Texas is loaded” card anymore.  Expect their disappointing finish drop them substantially in our final rankings.

After playing impressively in pool play, finishing 2-0 as the #5 seed in a loaded Pool A, #18 Armour (CO) has also packed up their equipment for the week.  A 6-4 loss to #7 O.C. Black Sox and 10-7 to Tampa Crush sealed the deal on their tournament.  Give this team credit for their willingness to travel and seek out the country’s best.  They represented their home state well as teams from Missouri and Kansas invaded hoping to snatch Super NIT berths out from under them.  They held their ground and won the event going undefeated.  Also credit them for traveling to Missouri for a Super NIT that included teams from Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma.  They finished 5th.  Expect this group to improve, adjust and come back in 2009 stronger and wiser.

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