Pete Cappetta: Tough against the Big Ten
I was chatting over Facebook with a friend who is MSU baseball fan. He says “I was taught it is nice to share. Congrats to both teams, and maybe we will settle this on the field at the tournament.”.
It is truly a nice sentiment. Though I bet if the two teams meet in the tournament, they might get a little grabby.
By now, the players and coaches are probably in Columbus since the Big Ten Tournament starts tomorrow. Neither MSU nor Illinois will see any action, though. That’s the beauty of getting the bye. Tomorrow’s action will see the 3 through 6 seeds taking on each other. Specifically, Ohio State and Minnesota face off for the noon game and Purdue and Penn State go at it for the mid-afternoon game.
What about Illinois? They won’t play till 7pm Thursday night. They will take on whichever of the two winners on Wednesday has the lowest seed. The Spartans will take on higher seed earlier in the day.
here’s a link to all the bracket goodness.
Just a few facts
With their last win, Illinois reached .500 for the full season.
This is the third #1 seed for Illinois and their sixth tournament in seven years.
Michigan State’s second seed is their highest seed ever and their Big Ten title this year is their first since 1979.
Justin Parr (.411) and Pete Cappetta (.403) rank #1 and #2 in the Big Ten in batting average during conference play (nice!)
The breakdown of how often each seed won the tournament: #1 seed- 8 times, #2 seed- 7 times, #3 seed- 4 times, #4 seed- 2 times, #5 seed- 1 time, #6 seed- 1 time.
Other Stuff
I wanted to express my thanks to Dan Zerrusen, father of Lee. Dan runs a print shop called Three Z Printing down in Teutopolis, Illinois and was nice enough to take one of my photos and blow it up and print up a nice poster. It looks great!
Thank you, Dan!
HI! It’s great the team made the tournament! Let’s bring the trophy home!
On a side note, the explanation the paper gave about our team not receiving a trophy at the time of the win because they had to rely on another team to lose seems practical, but a shame for our guys not to have one on hand. The article also stated the travel team guys were the only ones going to the tournament. To me, it seems everyone should have been able to go, to cheer if nothing else.