FSU baseball: 4 major takeaways from Noles Super Regional win over UConn

James Tibbs III

James Tibbs III was the ACC Player of the Year for a reason but had a forgettable Tallahassee Regional. I wrote how he got frustrated with teams not pitching to him and his performance in regionals may give opposing teams the confidence they could pitch to him. Tibbs hit a deep fly ball in his first at-bat against UConn that was a good swing and finally got a hit on a jam job later in game one. Here's what I said after that bloop hit.

Sometimes all it takes is seeing a ball get down for a hit to see a guy's confidence at the plate skyrocket. Tibbs proceeded to go 5-6 with three home runs, and six RBI in game two, including the eventual game-winning home run in the top of the 12th inning. FSU proved it could win without Tibbs hitting well in the regionals, and Tibbs showed great patience in not expanding his strike zone with his willingness to take walks when getting pitched around most of the time. Those walks often resulted in scores for FSU, so it's a pick-your-poison deal for opposing pitchers. The emergence of Max Williams over the past month, Cam Smith hitting in front of Tibbs, and the power of Marco Dinges and Jaime Ferrer is a murderer's row. If James Tibbs continues to hit like this, which is how he's played for much of the year? The FSU offense will be hard to hold below six or seven runs. If they get that type of production from the offense, and the starting pitching continues to go deep into games? FSU will be a tough out for anyone.