I was a bit dogmatic in counting the number of good pitchers needed to win. But the point remains that tournament baseball tends to reward pitching depth. Wake had excellent pitching depth last year and was somewhat unlucky not to be rewarded. Pitching depth has not been as good this year.
As to LSU last year, Skenes threw an amazing number of pitches in his starts, reducing wear on the bullpen. Several pitchers for LSU did much better in the CWS than their season results would have predicted. It happens. Baseball is a high variance game, as demonstrated by the 24 runs Florida scored against LSU in game 2. Thatcher Hurd, who shut Wake down for three innings, has not had a good 2024 to date. Griffin Herring, who shut down Florida in game 3 (I believe) has had a very good 2024 as a sophomore.
Freshmen often get better over the course of the year. Wake has some very good freshman pitchers. It could happen for Wake also.
Though Schwab field in Omaha seems large, it is only 5-10 feet bigger down the lines and to dead center than English field in Blacksburg. Power alley distances are the same. Fences might be higher in Omaha, I'm not sure about that. The added distance obviously increases the square footage of the outfield, rewarding the all important bloop single.
2 of Kurtz' 3 home runs on Sunday in Blacksburg might have been caught in Omaha because of the area of the field where they were hit.