NCAA Baseball Tournament schedule: Arizona to face Sam Houston State in Sunday elimination game

Same old song and dance

For the second consecutive year, the Arizona Wildcats will face the Sam Houston State Bearkats in the 1-1 elimination game in a Regional.

After losing to SHSU on Friday night, Arizona took an extra-inning affair from 4-seed Delaware on Saturday to stay alive.

The Bearkats lost to host Texas Tech 6-0 in the second game on Saturday, setting up the Lafayette Regional rematch while the Red Raiders advance to the Regional Final, which is scheduled to start at 6 PM CT (4 PM AZ time) on Sunday.

Arizona and Sam Houston State are scheduled to begin play at 2 PM CT (Noon AZ time) to determine who will challenge Texas Tech for the Regional title.

“You gotta know going in that they’re going to be really prepared,” SHSU head coach Matt Deggs said about facing Arizona. “You know that (the Arizona coaches) are going to do their homework, and I thought they were very well prepared, so it boils down to the little things really.”

“You know you’re going to have your hands full with that ball club. They’re a rock solid team.”

Arizona’s pitching situation is in a pretty interesting spot. For starters, it doesn’t feel like that there are any reliable options that have not already pitched this week. Cody Deason would have been penciled in as the Sunday starter, but he threw 19 pitches in a shutout tenth inning against Delaware on Saturday before the lightning moved in. There’s still a pretty good chance that he would be the choice though after only throwing about 50 pitches in the regular season finale against Cal.

Rio Gomez could be the choice, but Sam Houston has just two true left-handed hitters in their lineup. Randy Labaut and Landon Faulkner could be dark horse candidates for the spot as well.

Of course, Sam Houston State’s not in a much better spot, but they do have two regular starters in RHP Hayden Wesneski and LHP Seth Ballew that have not thrown yet this weekend in Lubbock. The Bearkats have already used nine different arms out of the 13 total they’ve had this season.

No matter what happens, the game will be broadcast on WatchESPN and the ESPN app, and we will have a GameThread/open chat deal again when the game starts for updates and more.

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