The Longest Wednesday

Wednesday morning at the DII Festival dawned with chilly temperatures but the promise of sunny skies. Unfortunately, the overnight rains meant that both tennis venues were late getting started in their matches, which pushed back not only the Armstrong State women's match against Lynn, but the men's match against Edinboro. In fact, due to the wet court delay AND two marathon matches beforehand, the Pirate men did not take the court against Edinboro until 10:30 pm - four and a half hours before the scheuled 5 pm game time.

Armstrong softball also had to wait a bit before it played its elimination game against Grand Valley State, and, like yesterday, had to wait for the offense to get into gear against the Lakers. But when it did ... the Pirates scored five runs in the last two innings to break open a 2-1 game and pick up the 7-4 victory. Junior Hannah Reppert had her second two-HR game of the NCAA postseason and now has 20 on the season, joining Alexis Mercer as the only Armstrong State players to hit 20 or more home runs in a year.

Jane Trzaska pitched the complete game and now has won three straight elimination games - the two at North Georgia last Thursday and today's game against GVSU. Having two quality pitchers will now be a necessity as Armstrong State will have to win twice tomorrow to stay alive - facing Adelphi at Noon and, if it gets past the Panthers, the Pirates will have to beat Humboldt State tomorrow evening.

Meanwhile, the women's tennis team had a tight match against No. 5 Lynn, but eventually won 5-1, setting up a quarterfinal showdown with one of the surprise teams of the tournament, Drury. The Panthers knocked off Concordia and come in with a 20-3 record, advancing to the Elite Eight only the second time in school history. 

Men's tennis was supposed to play at the same time as the softball team at Metro State's Regency Athletic Complex. Softball got on the field at 5:45 pm. Men's tennis did not take the courts until well past 9:00 p.m. - and when all was said and done, the No. 2-ranked Pirates took care of Edinboro, 5-0, to join the women's team in the national quarterfinals.

The first day of the NCAA DII Round of 16 historically has been the longest day of the championships - 32 teams playing 16 matches leaves very little room for error, and when several matches take longer than expected on top of a morning delay, well, somebody was going to be stuck playing late. As it turns out, the Pirates finished their match at 12:33 am local time - right as Thursday's opponent, NYIT, was putting the finishing touches on its 5-4 upset win over Indianapolis. So even though it's a quick turnaround, with less than 12 hours to get ready to play, both teams are on pretty equal footing from that standpoint.

So Thursday's schedule looks like this - Women's tennis takes on Drury at 8 am CT, while Softball faces Adelphi and Men's Tennis plays NYIT both at noon. We'll take another long day at the blog if it results in all of the Pirates winning, like Wednesday!