What a sports week this has been. First there is championship week of College of Baseball which is followed by the NCAA tourney, there is a lot of Spring Training Games and finally there was Round 2 of the WBC and now the Semifinals. Last night Korea beat Venezuela badly by a score of 10-2. If you were watching the game, it was over by the top of the second once Korea was up 7-0. Korea was the Pool 2 Runner Up while Venezuela was Pool 1 Champion. I talked yesterday about how if Korea won and Japan won, then those teams would play for the fifth time in the WBC, and for the entire tournament.
Now USA has a hard task ahead of them tonight as they must beat Japan in order to advance. The only team that Japan has lost to is Korea (a couple of times) and Japan has beaten a lot of hard competition as well, like Korea twice and then Cuba twice. Need less to say, the USA will have to be on the mark in order to win. The advantage that the USA has tonight is that Daisuke is pitching tonight for Japan, who several members of Team USA have seen before. That being said, it is still hard to hit against Daisuke. The keys for team USA tonight is to hit the ball hard and often, and early ralley can give them room to breathe because Japan's fundalmentals are so strong, that they will rarely make mistakes. The keys for Japan is to just shut down the USA offense, because the pitching behind team USA is not as strong as Japan.
The game tonight should be closer than the semifinal last night. Should be another great night of baseball!
