Lady Vols at Missouri

[DeerPark12]

The ability to hit them though doesn't really apply to the high stakes dud performances this year against Missouri and last year in the WCWS. All three games were against unseen opponents and thus work against your argument.

Disagree completely. You forget that in the first two Missouri games, which were every bit as pressure-packed as the third, the two combined to allow three runs, all three of which were a direct result of defensive miscues (an error, a ground ball that should have been an error but was ruled a fielder's choice and a dropped ball in left field).

In the world series last year, they gave up 5 runs to an Alabama team that had seen them more than a few times and gave up 3 runs to Oregon. A lack of offense is what cost the team the WCWS games last year, not poor pitching.

If you want to say they don't come up big in important games, then you must be forgetting the other NCAA Tournament games in 2012. Like the Knoxville regional where they allowed 4 runs in 5 games. Or maybe allowing 4 runs over the three games of the super regional with Georgia, the lone loss of which was a 1-0 decision where the bats were completely silent.

If you want to blame the pitchers for not throwing shutouts every time out, then I guess we don't have a lot to discuss. But until Sunday's loss, the pitching had only given up 5 or more runs 6 times. We won 3 of those, lost one in extra innings. Before Sunday, our run totals in 8 losses were 2, 0, 1, 1, 5, 3, 1, and 0. So I'll give you that pitching may have cost us the Florida game where we scored 5.

Just 5 runs scored wins us all but 6 games on our schedule. That's a pretty stellar number. Blame pitching for Sunday, sure. But I don't think under any circumstances does a single poor game indicate a lack of growth as a pitcher or poor coaching of pitchers. They have thrown well enough to easily win all but 6 games, and we won three of those 6 anyway.