Monday, August 3, 2009

91st Natsu Koshien - Field at a glance

So we finally have our field of 49. The draw will be in 2 days and then we will have an idea of which teams may have an easy road, and which may end up in a proverbial "bracket of death".

So let's take a look at the field... (w/respect to the Natsu Koshien). We have...
  • 11 first-time participants
  • 6 returning participants (Aomori Yamada is making their 6th consecutive!)
  • 5 teams making their 20+ appearance
  • 7 teams whose last appearance was before 2000 (Kansai Gakuin is the longest - 1939!)
  • 13 past champions
It's a strange dichotomy. One one hand we have about 25% of the field who are coming to Koshien for the first time. On the other hand, about 60% of the teams have already been here at least once this decade. This is a testament to the fact that anyone can make it, but sometimes prefectures are dominated by a couple of teams.

Once the brackets are drawn on Wednesday, I'll have a review of each bracket and the teams involved.

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