The Postseason: And so it Begins...

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their 11th entry for the 2012 season.

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It’s that time … tourney time!! I would just like to thank everyone for their support all year and it would mean a lot to the team to see familiar faces down at the tourney this weekend. So if you can find a way down to UIC, please make it!

The ultimate goal for every team in this league is to win the conference tournament. To say we are excited to start the tournament is an understatement. We feel really good about ourselves right now and have been playing well as of late. But it’s important for us to control our emotions and take each game pitch by pitch. A lot of teams can go into these tournaments and hype themselves up too much. We are looking to stay in the moment and execute every play. If we do this, we have a great chance this weekend.

Not much else I have to say. It’s going to be a fun weekend and I can’t wait to go to battle with my teammates.

The Goal

Go Panthers!!

Go Panthers is right!

What a great weekend this past weekend was. Three game sweep of Wright State to basically help spoil their regular season championship hopes. It never really is a good thing to be a “spoiler”, since that means you fell short of your goal for the regular season. However, there is no better time to play that role than right now. Playing good baseball at this point of the season is something some teams can take for granted, but I assure you we are not. Getting hot at the end of the season reminds me a lot of the 2010 year. I feel like we were firing on all cylinders that year towards tourney time and look what the end result was? I’m hoping to see some sort of parody with this season but only time will tell.

The sweep was a great thing, but something more personal to myself and six others was the presentation of “Senior Day”. A lot of work went into that day, starting with Steve Sanfilippo and ending at the Parents. We appreciate all the hard work you all put in to make that day as special as possible for us seniors. The bats, flowers for mom, baseballs for dads, and the amazing feast following the win was the icing on the cake (the cake was amazing as well!). YUMMMYYYY!

The tournament is always such a great time. The pressure-packed games with so much energy is a competitors dream. Our team is made up of competitors who will give it their all to play good baseball. We are going to play for ourselves, our teammates, and our school in hopes to bring a tournament championship back to UWM. The Horizon League is filled with great competition and I’ve been blessed and humbled to have faced a numerous amount of championship-caliber opponents. With that being said, we are the only ones who really control how far we go. We feel if we play our brand of baseball, especially the type of baseball we have played of late, there is no opponent who will be able to dethrone us. The dog pile is our ultimate goal and it’ll be the only time I’ll be content with 30 other guys on top of one another.

Win or lose this weekend, the players are extremely humbled by the overwhelming support you have all showed us along this season. We literally could not have asked for a better following. Whether it was San Diego, Little Rock, or Dayton, you all have found a way out of your busy schedules to put a little Panther baseball in your heart. All we hope is that you are proud of the way we have played throughout the year and have no regrets in any trip you have taken, as we reciprocate those feelings. Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing your shining faces this weekend in Chicago.

Go Panthers

Quick thoughts from Blow....

My mind is empty....I’m hoping to write a blog next week about our flight out to a Regional!

Yes, We are Alive and Well...

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their 10th entry for the 2012 season.

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What up Panther Nation? Sorry we’ve been away for so long! School is winding down and with that comes a lot of papers, projects, exams, etc. But, we are back now!!

This past week went really well. It started with a nice win over Northwestern at Miller Park. What a sweet experience that was! It doesn’t matter how old you are, playing in a major league stadium is awesome. It’s even cooler being a Brewer fan. A lot of us found ourselves imitating Brewers on the field and in the dugout. Just clowning around, having some fun, because that’s what it’s all about. We felt like big leaguers for a day, which is pretty cool!

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you followed along this weekend and know we swept Butler in a three-game series. The bats were on fire. 20-plus hits in the last two games of the series. Unreeeeebz (Cale Tassi voice). The come-from-behind win on Sunday was the most impressive in my opinion. We couldn’t get much going for the first five or six innings or so and we dug ourselves into a 5-0 hole early. But, Eric King did a phenomenal job coming in out of the bullpen and putting up zeroes for us. He allowed us to chip away at the lead before we busted it open.

It was just a great weekend all in all. Guys were having a lot of fun, pranks were being made all weekend, the bus was upbeat and happy. Obviously, winning helped but I really feel we are gelling right now and hitting our stride. It’s just an exciting time to be apart of Panther baseball. Strap on your seatbelts and enjoy these next two weeks with us!

It is now time to wrap up the player introductions. The two guys left are both catchers and both newcomers to the team this year.

This is junior Will Fadness. Sick flow bro. Willy is a JUCO transfer and is enjoying his first year at UWM. In case you guys were wondering, March isn’t called March Madness, it’s actually March FADness. Willy is a pretty laid back dude. He attended Eau Claire Memorial High School and went down to Arizona for junior college. He wound up back in the cold state of Wisconsin two years later. I’m sure he misses that 70-degree weather during the winter. Will came up in a baseball family. He has three brothers, and all four of them were named after baseball players. See, you learn something new every day. Oh, and last but not least, Will’s favorite movie is Bull Durham.

This is freshman Mitch Ghelfi, AKA Mac Miller (left photo), AKA John Mayer (right photo). Follow him on Twitter @Mitchyslick_. Mitch had to have hip surgery his senior year, so that earned him the nickname “hips.” When one of the catchers is needed to catch a bullpen, Mitch is known for pulling the “ah my hips are sore” card on the other catchers. I recently found out Mitch likes to dump food in the sink at his dorm, thinking it will just go down the drain. Most recently, he tried putting vegetable soup down the drain and all the veggies ended up in the sink. Maybe next time Mitch. I own Mitch in video games. I think one of our matchups in NHL ended up being 10-3 in favor of yours truly. Every once in a while, I keep the games close just so he doesn’t lose all of his confidence. Mitchy slick is a good dude though and a fun guy to have around.

Paco thoughts… I didn’t think I would like it, but Hunger Games was really good and I can’t wait to get the books now… 'Days Like These' by Jason Aldean is that jam… I think NHL hockey is underrated and NHL playoff hockey is even more underrated. If you haven’t been watching this years playoffs, I suggest you start.

That’s all I have, I’m tired…