Situational pitching will always be important. I haven’t looked specifically but would guess that all national champions won playoff games that were low scoring.
Team ERAs can be misleading but come this time of year I do check out teams pitching distribution. I’ve touted Tennessee and A&M as having better depth than everyone else because they have multiple guys with good chunks of innings and lowish ERAs. And within that you often have 1 guy that looks to be true #1 that can lock you down, like Prager has done twice this post season.
It also is a reason A&M was a poor matchup for us. You compare them to ArKsnsas. They won lots of games, but they seemed to have fewer options beyond Smith. And Smith tailed off a bit at the end too. They had less hitting. And boom early elimination.
The playoff format is important in playing into pitching staffs and depth. We could be very competitive in a best 2 of 3 scenario but a loser bracket regional was a terrible spot. It changes the dynamic of who we are at our best.
UF offensively is a bit like Arkansas pitching. Jac = Hagen. Then you have other capable guys, but they aren’t consistent. They hit tons of homers but outside of Jac they do nothing well offensively. Put them in a bigger park in Omaha and you negate some of that power.