Can ECU baseball and UNC baseball advance to the Super Regional?

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. I have not seen an official announcement today, but it does appear that both Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler are headed to live golf. Did you see the story over the weekend that Kevin Na, who was the 33rd ranked player in the world, resigned his PGA Tour membership?

Which, a preemptive move, because I believe the PGA Tour's response to this live series will be to rescind membership from those players who choose to go play. Which is their right. Which is absolutely their right. And I also agree that this is a very sticky issue. This is nothing simple. There is nothing simple about this. We'll talk about it with Rich Lerner tomorrow. Alright, but what we always try to do to start off the 2 o'clock hour, unless we have something else that gets in our way, is present you with stuff you need to hear from the day before, maybe, or the couple days before. It's the wall of sound.

The wall of sound is a function of this studio. There's no doubt about it. Alright, let's go to the NBA Finals. So after Game 1, in which Boston outscored Golden State 40-18 in the 4th to win, really going away, there was a lot of worry around the basketball world.

Boston's got him. What was wrong with the Warriors? And Draymond Green said, we're alright. I think our offense is always a lot of Steph. It all starts with Steph. When KD was here, our offense still started with Steph.

That's the way it's going to be. I think when you're playing against a team like that, you have to get offense from other places and not just Steph. And I think for the most part, we did a pretty good job with that. Klay, what, 4 for 19 had a tough one, but that happens. We know he'll make shots as this series continues to go on, but we didn't turn the ball over.

I thought that was very important in this game, is keeping them out of transition to make them play against our defense. And by the way, Boston did turn it over. They had 7 turnovers in the first quarter.

They were shooting lights out. I think 10 of 21 from 3-point range in the first half, but they had 13 or 14 turnovers. So it was basically a 1-point game at halftime. Third quarter, Golden State went bananas.

Steph Curry, who had a huge game, 29 points, but it was really when he scored more than how much he scored, talked about the other side of the ball and why that was the key. It's always been a point of emphasis in terms of trying to win basketball games and do your job. Over the course of my career, it's been a physical development that's happened over time that obviously helps. A lot of work that's gone into that, but at the end of the day, from my rookie year to now, it's always been about effort and just a care factor, overcoming physical limitations or with matchups or whatever it is.

If you try hard, good things will happen and you'll continue to get better. So it's always been a point of emphasis. Defense was really why Golden State did well, and if you ask Jalen Brown of the Boston Celtics, he would say it was more than just defense. It's the NBA Finals. You come to play basketball, I know what Jeremiah's going to do.

I know what he's going to try to do. They switched the lineup. They tried to put him on me to kind of be physical, muck the game up, pull me, grab me. And overall, raise the intensity. I feel like they got away with a lot of stuff tonight, but I'm looking forward to the challenge next game.

All of that stuff, the gimmicks, the tricks, we've just got to be the smarter team, be the more physical team, and look forward to just coming out and playing Celtic basketball. Here's what was interesting. The interview that they did with Imei Udonka, was it after the third quarter that they interviewed Udonka? Actually, I think it was earlier in the game. It had to be earlier in the game. It was maybe in between the first and second quarters or middle second quarter where he actually said, we have to adjust to what they're not calling on the other end, which I thought was incredibly cool. Like, yes, okay, I get it.

I get it. I don't know. I think it's the NBA Finals. They're going to allow a little bit more, and maybe in the next game, they'll allow a little bit less. We'll see if Jaylen Brown's message through the media gets to the officials. I'm sure Umei Udonka has said the same things.

I will say this. I thought both sides were played very well defensively. I mean, there were some great defensive plays the other way, too. Boston made some great defensive plays. Look, that was a one-point game at the half.

Anybody's game. Golden State just played a great third quarter again, and rather than stay within striking distance, it wasn't. Golden State ran through the tape in the third quarter, and they made that a complete laugher. It was like 24 points after three.

It was just a huge gap. Boston wasn't coming back from that. Here's Umei Udonka, the Celtics head coach, on what they need to do. We had opportunities to probably, you know, attack the basket and get some buckets, some easy buckets.

We were settled for some floaters. You know, I think when looking up in the first quarter, we were shooting 50, 40, 90 across the board. It's still down due to a lot of those turnovers. So a lot of times it was just not getting shots up or being a little hesitant instead of going to attack the basket, looking for fouls a lot of times, and that's what got us in trouble. Had some more early misses in the first half, and with their smaller team, smaller lineups in there, we got to attack the basket much more aggressively. I would also say that in some ways, they were sort of exposed in not having a point guard because even though you may not consider Steph Curry necessarily a point guard, Curry drove into the lane a lot and found players for layups. Whether it's Kevon Looney or it was Andrew Wiggins, he found releases for the pressure of Boston's defense, and I thought that was an underrated part of Golden State's offense.

All right, now you have something, Dennis, that we need to hear, and I need you to set it up. Okay, so this is the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. I believe the summer wooden bat league.

I think it's one of those. Anyway, it's either a lower minor league team or college team. Nevertheless, this weekend they had a game in a series. They had already had consecutive walk-off wins. Well, this is the bottom of the ninth inning, and they were trailing.

This is how the game finished. Imagine winning a baseball game without getting a hit. Brown ball sharply hit to short.

Bad hop eats up Devaney. He still throws to first, and safe at first. Dillard pulled off the base. Payoff pitch from Turino to Conine, and it misses upstairs. Ball four.

The 0-1. High and tight, and it hits them. A hit-by-pitch will load the bases.

It's second to Vilas at first. The 1-1 pitch to Ray Patrick. Didder inside, and that hits Didder. A hit-by-pitch forces in a run. Another 2-2 from Turino. Fletcher Vance is hit by a pitch. It's the third straight-hit batsman, and this game is tied. Winning run is now at third.

No margin for error. Infield in, outfield in. The first pitch. Hollins is hit by a pitch. He'll go to first, and the Blue Wahoos walk it off for the third night in a row. In the ninth. Error.

Walk. Hit-by-pitch. Hit-by-pitch. Hit-by-pitch. Hit-by-pitch. And the Blue Wahoos win it 7-6. By the way, they're the double-A affiliate in the Southern League of the Miami Marlins.

I have a question. By the way, I like the Blue Wahoos as a team name. How is there not a bench-clearing brawl? No, seriously.

I'm not even saying that any of those were intentional, because they probably weren't. But if your guy hits four of my guys in a row, we're throwing hands. I mean, but you can walk off with that win, though. That's the thing.

No, I don't care. You can't hit four of my guys. Are you serious? It just blows my mind how you can score to tie a game and score a winning run without getting a hit.

Well, that's not that uncommon. Without getting a hit? Yeah, there's a lot of ways to score runs. Yeah, but two without getting a hit? Reach on an error, you know, whatever. You can score a run. I know how it's done. That's crazy.

I've never seen that before, but I just don't understand how you can hit. Honestly, after the third batter, I don't know. We gotta go. We gotta go.

But here's the thing. Why are you pitching inside still? You've hit three straight batters. I'm gonna ask Aaron Fitt when we come back. D1Baseball.com. He's a busy man.

I want to get to him when we come back. East Carolina's taking on Coastal Carolina. North Carolina plays tonight. Louisville's going at it right now with Michigan. They've scored 1,000 runs in that. You know, there was a team that trailed by 12 and then won by 14. How? In college baseball yesterday. Trailed by 12, won by 14.

In the same game. We're going to talk to Aaron Fitt about all of that next. Adam Gold here from my man, Coach Pete DeRuta with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement.

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The next 10 people will do for you your very own tax and retirement plan that will help you minimize taxation all the way through retirement. 800-661-7383. All you got is call or you can text Adam to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. Aaron Fitt is in Greenville where the Pirates now have a 4-0 lead over Coastal Carolina. It is a game where the winner advances to the Super Regional and we're all excited for a 4-0 start.

As we bring in Aaron Fitt, I have questions. It's gotten contentious, not this game, but yesterday between the Pirates and Coastal Carolina. Can you walk us through what has happened in the games between these two schools?

Yesterday, they met in the winner's bracket game at night. It just seemed like East Carolina was as excited as their crowd was. The team just didn't come out and play great baseball. I think Cliff Godwin tried a couple of things to get them going a little bit. Checked the Coastal pitcher's cap for a foreign substance and it came back clean.

That kind of had the reverse consequences. Tired up Coastal a little bit. Cliff very obviously tried to get himself tossed and very quickly made his exit and stomped back to the dugout and tried to ignite the crowd. They were into it.

The crowd wasn't involved. They got beat yesterday. Nick Parker was awesome for Coastal. He's come out and looks really good right now and surely they're in control. Yeah, they lead 4-0 top of the fourth inning. It also got kind of goofy in Chapel Hill. Now, I had not seen the play in question until today. Infield pop-up, sort of.

First and second, two outs early on in the winner's bracket game with VCU on Saturday. I actually think the umpires got the call right. That was not an easy play. It wasn't a routine play anyway. Scott Forbes argued that it should have been an infield fly, but I didn't like the rest of it. I didn't mind the ejection. He argued a long time.

I get that. I didn't like what happened after that. I didn't like the two-game suspension.

Walk me through that whole thing. Yeah, that was unfortunate. It turned out they ruled that he stayed too long. They gave him two games for a prolonged argument. You hate to see that in a postseason game.

They gave him a lot of rope. At first it was frustrating because we didn't know what the cause of the suspension was. It looked like if you looked at the video, he was saying, he bumped me.

I'm talking about the umpire. Forbes was saying, he bumped me. But it wasn't a contact-related thing. We found out 12 hours later when the NCAA finally got around to issuing a statement about it, that it was not contact. It was just prolonged arguing. They had the judgment call. They probably gave him fair warning and he stuck around too long. You still hate to see.

You'd like to see him get a little more rope there. We're not here to see you guys in blue. I know you were critical of maybe not these specific umpires, although I guess you were. Which is fair because they're part of it too. We should be able to criticize them. We don't want the managers or players to talk directly about the umpiring.

I get that. But those of us in the media, we shouldn't be afraid to call umpires out. They do decide what happens. They do decide how games are played. I heard back from some coaches around the country in different conferences after that saying, hey, this particular umpire crew, they're pretty bad when it comes to this stuff.

There's a couple guys on that crew that are hot-headed and have that look-at-me thing. The problem is there's not a lot of accountability. They have absolute power out there. That's sports. People always have the last say. I wish we had more accountability in the process after the game.

I wish there was a better oversight process, a better appeals process. Or maybe have the umpire crews involved come out and face the media. Everyone else has to answer to what happens on the field. How come those guys don't? I'm a fan of a pool reporter.

In the media, we don't always have just normal media. I'm a fan of a pool reporter. Over the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. Aaron Fitt, D1Baseball.com is joining us. Missouri State had a 12-0 lead over Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma State won that game 29-15. I don't want to just say explain that, but explain that because I have seen multiple 20-run-plus outputs in this tournament so far. It's been a long time since they dialed the bats back. It's been a long time since I've seen these kinds of numbers put up.

What's going on? It feels like 1998 all over again. The height of the gorilla ball era.

You had that 21-14 score in the national championship game in Omaha, which was an embarrassment for the sport, frankly. It just kind of showed everybody that this is way out of control. I'll tell you what, Adam. I'm just going to say the balls are juiced. I think we need an investigation here. Major League Baseball had a similar situation. They investigated, and they found out, hey, guess what? Our balls are juiced.

That's why everything is so nuts right now. Clearly. I think at this point it's obvious, and you can talk to people around the country, talk to coaches who cut open the ball and say, hey, this isn't the same. There's something going on here, but you're seeing pop-ups carry out. You're seeing absurd scores.

It's kind of cheap in the product. Every time you look up a ball's playing over the fence, it doesn't mean anything anymore. Home run derby is boring. I want to see balls in play on the field. I want to see action. Right now, I'm not pleased with what we're seeing, and there's just been too many of these. The team scores 20 runs, and it's the fourth highest-scoring team of the day.

It's stupid. There have been many regionals where somebody scores 18, and it's the second or third highest run output in that regional. I don't know what's going on where Notre Dame advanced, but there were 32 runs combined scored in that regional. Are they using baseballs from the 1940s? What's going on there?

Yeah, I guess they didn't get the shipment. It's wild. We're talking about Texas Tech and Notre Dame are two very offensive clubs down there that did not score very much. That's a ballpark where, historically, you see a lot of home runs down Georgia Southern this year.

Not so much. That team is more of a pitching and defense team, but it was strange to me. To see how well-pitched that regional was, and then Coral Gables, too, another one that has had some really good low-scoring games. Those are such outliers now that it's really refreshing when you see a couple of regionals with scores like that.

By the way, you mentioned Coral Gables. Miami fell apart late and ended up losing, getting bounced from their own regional. How would you assess how the ACC has done? Obviously, North Carolina has a game tonight against VCU at 6 o'clock. How would you say how the ACC has done?

Not great. Obviously, Notre Dame has advanced. Right now, you've got a lot of teams in trouble who are already out. Georgia Tech had a shot at Tennessee. They were in it, and they couldn't get it done. Virginia went home yesterday.

They've seen a lot of people have some high hopes for it. Virginia Tech looks great. That team right now looks like an absolute juggernaut, scoring a jillion runs. I think they're the real deal. 46 runs. They've won on aggregate, 46-15 in sweeping their regional.

That's nuts. Those are real bats. Those are real hitters.

They're pro guys. They've got a couple of first-round-type talents on that team. They also really defend, too. I think they're going to be a tough out here in the postseason. Give me what you think about the Tar Heels so far. I know they lost that second game to VCU and it put them in the loser's bracket.

It's tough, man. You've got to win so many games just to give yourselves a chance on the Monday. Have you seen the Tar Heels so far? Yeah, they bounced back well after losing that game Saturday. Their offense has been so hot. It was kind of eyebrow-raising to see them get shut down in that game, but you wondered really if there were enough arms in this regional to stop them once you got deeper into the weekend.

Again, stop me if you've heard this before, Adam. It's a real offense. They can put up crooked numbers in a hurry. What Vance Honeycutt is doing is so special. I'm sure UNC fans are enjoying the ride. You just don't see a talent like that come along very often.

To do what he's doing as a true freshman is remarkable. Yeah, I like their chances tonight. Again, it's a battle of attrition of them now and you get to this point in the weekend.

They'll piece it together. It's not a team that has a whole lot of starting pitching beyond the top two. I assume we'll see Carlson tonight come back after pitching on Friday their ace. I suspect they're going to score a lot of runs.

It shouldn't really matter. Coastal, by the way, just got right back into this game. Looks like a two-run homer here in the fourth inning.

Cut that lead in half. Coastal came back yesterday against Virginia. They're now 6-0 in the middle innings and they came back.

This game's not over. Texas and East Carolina would be electric. The ultimate way to exercise the demons of super regionals for East Carolina.

This is the best. I heard Mike Rudy say it's like in golf. The best player never to win a major and this is the best program that's never been to Omaha. They've been to 32 regionals and four or six supers.

I lost track of these supers. They've had chances. They've had really good teams. If you've got to do it by beating, in my opinion, the greatest program in history college baseball with a trillion trips to Omaha and multiple national titles and all that, the history that Texas has, and they come to your place, it's going to be unreal.

That would be a lot of fun if that matchup materializes. How good were those two catches by Bryson Worrell? Well, I mean, it's just routine for that dude. He's fun, man. A true five-tool center fielder if a hip tool holds up and he's had a great year. He's hit for power.

He's got a rifle arm. He is really fun to watch. Aaron Fitt, D1Baseball.com.

Thank you for letting me borrow, bother you, not even borrow you, bother you while you're working. I appreciate your time. We'll talk again soon, man.

Aaron Fitt, D1Baseball.com. I apologize to East Carolina fans while we were discussing. It went from 4-0 to 4-0 to 4-2. So hopefully the Pirates will be in good shape. We want them to continue to advance.

We want them to advance and take on Texas in the next round. This is the Adam Gold Show. June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Cane's Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Cane's 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.