Tuesday featured a veritable cornucopia of quality midweek games. Senior second baseman Tyler Mach had a huge day in Oklahoma State’s 10-3 win over Dallas Baptist, going 4-for-5 with a pair of homers, a double and five RBIs. Vanderbilt third baseman Pedro Alvarez nearly matched Mach in the Commodores’ 8-0 win over Austin Peay, going 4-for-5 with a pair of doubles and a triple in support of freshman lefthander Mike Minor, who picked up his first collegiate win with eight shutout innings, striking out eight and allowing just three hits. Out on the West Coast, Cal State Fullerton avenged last week’s 8-7 loss to San Diego State with a 9-8 win over the Aztecs; Pepperdine pounded UC Irvine 13-2 behind a pair of homers and six RBIs by third baseman Chase d’Arnaud; Arizona State blasted Arizona 22-8, led by seven RBIs for first baseman Brett Wallace; UC Riverside got five strong innings and seven strikeouts from senior lefty Marc Rzepczynski in his return from elbow soreness, and the Highlanders beat San Diego 9-4. Elsewhere, Georgia Tech’s pitching woes continued, as the Yellow Jackets fell 10-7 against Western Carolina despite a spirited comeback attempt. [...] Continue Reading »

Nice day for California sophomore first baseman David Cooper yesterday, belting two home runs in Cal’s 6-1 win against UC Santa Barbara. Cooper, a transfer from Cal State Fullerton, is off to a very hot start, batting .444 with four homers, 17 RBIs and a .759 slugging percentage. It might help that he’s plenty familiar with the Big West, and the Golden Bears have now played three games against UC Irvine (winning two), two against Long Beach State (losing both) and two against the Gauchos (winning both). Going 4-3 against that group is pretty good, because the Big West is clearly an improved conference. [...] Continue Reading »

Strike One: Rock, Chalk, RedHawk?
A number of Midwestern teams went down South and won series this weekend, but none were more impressive than Miami (Ohio). The RedHawks were supposed to open their season last week at Western Kentucky, but the series was cancelled by snow and ice, so Miami was forced to open this weekend on the road against a ranked Winthrop team that had been playing games for three weeks. The RedHawks, on the other hand, have yet to practice outside even once. But somebody forgot to tell Miami it wasn’t supposed to win the series; junior righthanders John Ely and Connor Graham helped lead the RedHawks to big wins in the first two games, and Miami nearly completed the sweep in the nightcap of Saturday’s doubleheader before Winthrop scored the winning run on a 10th-inning wild pitch. The message was clear: Miami is going to be a force in the Mid-American conference this year and a handful for Evansville and Texas the next two weeks. [...] Continue Reading »

Southern coach Roger Cador has built one of the nation’s better programs over the last decade–the Jaguars ranked at No. 44 on BA’s ranking of the top 64 programs since 1999–but the last couple of years haven’t been as easy for Cador’s club. Since winning 44 games with Rickie Weeks’ last club in 2003 (including a 1-2 regional mark), the Jaguars have won just 81 games in three subsequent seasons as the university’s financial commitment to the baseball program has wavered. When assistant coach Barret Rey became Grambling’s new head coach last summer, Cador was not allowed to hire a full-time replacement. [...] Continue Reading »

Today’s mailbag is a day later than promised, a result of those pesky issue deadlines getting in the way. Just a reminder, if you’ve got a question for the mailbag, please e-mail your question along with your name and hometown to collegeblog@baseballamerica.com. Before we get to the mailbag, how about Missouri State junior lefthander Ross Detwiler, who struck out 13 over seven innings of two-hit, one-run ball in the Bears’ season-opening win against Dallas Baptist last night? He retired the first nine batters of the game, seven of them on strikeouts. He’s going to have a monster year. To the mailbag [...] Continue Reading »

I’ll have a new mailbag question up tomorrow, but for today I just wanted to post a few quick thoughts on Tuesday’s games:

• Florida State’s offense is legit. The Seminoles pounded Florida 14-6 Tuesday, posting six runs in the first two innings against lefthander Kevin Chapman, one of the better power arms in the freshman class. FSU has now scored in the double digits for eight straight games, and this outburst came on the road against a Florida team that just won a series against Miami. It looks like sophomore Ruairi O’Connor’s days as the starting center fielder could be numbered; freshman sensation D’Vontrey Richardson got the start there yesterday and continued to impress, going 3-for-5 with a double and his first career homer. By the way, Florida State coach Mike Martin picked up his 1,445th career win yesterday, moving him into sole possession of fifth place on the all-time list. [...] Continue Reading »

More bad news today for Tennessee, which has already been playing without All-American outfielder Julio Borbon, who fractured his ankle last January and will be out for another month or so. The Volunteers will be out another All-American for this weekend, at least. Catcher J.P. Arencibia will miss this weekend’s series against Indiana-Purdue University-Fort Wayne with a strained muscle in his back. [...] Continue Reading »

Strike One: West Coast Showdown

At least 50 scouts were on hand for Friday’s showdown between San Francisco ace Aaron Poreda and UC Riverside ace James Simmons, and they did not leave disappointed. The Highlanders won 3-0 as Simmons struck out 15 in a four-hit, complete-game shutout. Riverside pushed across a pair of runs in the third inning, but Poreda was stingy on the whole, allowing just the two runs on eight hits while striking out seven over 5 2/3 innings. UCR coach Doug Smith said Poreda, a 6-foot-6 junior lefty, was “filthy,” running his fastball up to the 94-95 mph range. [...] Continue Reading »

For a while, it looked like North Carolina was going to upstage fellow CWS finalist Oregon State, which started off 2007 by throwing a combined no-hitter against Hawaii-Hilo. UNC senior righthander Robert Woodard took a perfect game into the seventh inning in the Tar Heels’ season-opening 11-0 win against Seton Hall on Friday, before Matt Smedberg’s two-out double to right field spoiled the bid on Woodard’s 66th pitch. His final line: 7 2/3 economical innings (just 80 pitches, 63 strikes), one hit, no runs, seven strikeouts (tying a career high), no walks. He worked mostly with his fastball, which sat in the mid-80s and topped out at 87. That’s a change from late last year, when pitching coach Scott Forbes said Woodard topped out around 84-85 thanks to a tired arm. [...] Continue Reading »

The reigning national runner-up, North Carolina, has opened its season at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill. UNC senior righthander Robert Woodard looks very sharp early, striking out Seton Hall leadoff man Dan Lopez on four pitches to start the game, then retiring the next two batters on a pop-up and a ground ball to second. The Tar Heels’ lineup looks a little different than it did in the College World Series last June, as left fielder Jay Cox is now in the Rockies system and returning outfielders Mike Cavasini and Seth Williams are banged up. Junior Reid Fronk shifts from third base to his new position of left field, and freshmen Drew Poulk and Dustin Ackley occupy the center and left-field spots, respectively. [...] Continue Reading »

With his team off to an 0-4 start, McNeese State coach Chad Clement resigned on Thursday, saying in an official statement that his heart was not in coaching anymore. A Lake Charles, La., native and former Cowboys player and assistant coach, Clement was 82-84 overall after just starting his fourth season as head coach. McNeese State went 35-20 last season and its 22-8 record was the best in the Southland Conference in the regular season. Athletic director Sonny Watkins named assistant coach Chris Fackler as the Cowboys’ interim head coach. McNeese State visits Louisiana Tech this weekend.

Nice win for Troy last night, coming back from a three-run deficit to tie the score in the eighth inning and then beating Alabama 7-5 on Edgar Ramirez’ go-ahead RBI single in the 12th. Meanwhile, Auburn also lost a game in 12 innings, falling to Lipscomb 4-3, but the Tigers got an encouraging debut from freshman Taylor Thompson, who struck out four and allowed just a pair of runs over 4.2 innings of work. He’ll end up being an important arm for Auburn this year. On to the mailbag [...] Continue Reading »

Clemson didn’t have to do much to assume the No. 1 spot in the latest Baseball America Top 25 rankings. The Tigers ascended to the top without playing a game, as No. 2 Miami dropped a pair of games to Mercer last weekend and No. 1 Rice limped to a 2-3 start. Clemson plays host to George Mason this weekend in the first tuneup series of its rather light non-conference slate. The biggest challenge between now and Clemson’s March 30-April 1 series against Miami is a two-game home-and-home set against No. 3 South Carolina on March 3-4. That gives the Tigers plenty of time to break in their brand-new weekend rotation. Jason Berken, Josh Cribb and Stephen Faris are gone, replaced by junior righthanders P.J. Zocchi and David Kopp and sophomore lefty Ryan Hinson. [...] Continue Reading »

In an effort to stem the tide of e-mails correcting me for a couple of errors in yesterday’s chat, I figured I’d clarify a couple of things. First of all, I wrote that Elon was snubbed for a regional last year, which is of course false; Elon was the No. 2 seed in the Clemson regional. Also, I said that San Diego State is the favorite in the Mountain West Conference, forgetting about that little program in Fort Worth. Texas Christian is undoubtedly still the team to beat in that conference–I love the Horned Frogs’ pitching staff. Earlier, in the podcast, I referred to Vanderbilt’s Brett Jacobson as “Casey,” who was actually a former Stanford basketball player. It was just one of those days–sorry for the brain cramps. Travel and lack of sleep conspired against me. [...] Continue Reading »

Strike One: That’s Why They Call ‘Em Dirtbags

Long Beach State coach Mike Weathers tempered his expectations a bit heading into the season, and with good reason. Of the 35 players on the Dirtbags roster, 21 are freshmen or sophomores.

“It’s the youngest team I’ve had,” said Weathers, who took over as LBSU head coach in 2001. “This is the first time I haven’t had a starting pitcher back on the weekend–we had Jered Weaver, Abe Alvarez and then last year we had Jared Hughes. This year we don’t have one guy, so it’s going to be different for us.”

That inexperience was supposed to translate into a down year for the Beach, but somebody forgot to give the Dirtbags the memo. LBSU followed up its surprising series win against Southern California last weekend by taking two of three this weekend against then-No. 7 Texas. [...] Continue Reading »

Dominic de la Osa picked the right time for his first hit of the season. The Vanderbilt right fielder entered Sunday’s game against Baylor in a season-opening 0-for-9 slump, and he struck out swinging in his first two at-bats against Baylor starter Jeff Mandel. But in the fifth inning, with the score tied 3-3, de la Osa came to the plate with the bases loaded and the Baylor fans chanting, “Zero, zero”–a reference to de la Osa’s batting average. He reached for a pitch over the outside corner and pulled it through the hole between third base and shortstop, driving in two runs. The Commodores added two more in the inning to break the game open a bit. [...] Continue Reading »

Josh Satow was exactly what Pat Murphy said he’d be: a soft-tossing lefthander who gets by with his savvy and competitiveness. He stymied Houston in Arizona State’s 11-1 win Sunday, allowing just one run on six hits in a complete game while striking out eight and walking just one. Talking to Satow on the field afterward was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the 5-foot-9 junior is one of the few players who stands eye-to-eye with me, which was refreshing after I spent the morning craning my neck to chat with giants like Ryan Flaherty and Casey Weathers of Vanderbilt and Matt Spencer of ASU. (Weathers, by the way, is listed at 6-foot-1 but might be taller than that. Or maybe it just seems like it because he has such a massive upper body. I digress.) The second thing that is striking about Satow, other than his diminutive build, is his thoughtfulness and intelligence. He is clearly a guy who holds no delusions about his own limitations and understands what he has to do to be successful. [...] Continue Reading »

After Vanderbilt’s Pedro Alvarez doubled in the ninth inning against Arizona State yesterday, Sun Devils coach Pat Murphy went out to make a pitching change, and Alvarez used the break in the action to confer with Vandy coach Tim Corbin along the third base line. As Alvarez returned to second base, he and Murphy crossed paths, and I noticed that Murphy said something to him. Always gracious, Alvarez said last night that Murphy simply complimented him in a show of good sportsmanship. Murphy had a slightly different take this morning. [...] Continue Reading »

Baylor’s going to be a heavy contender for the 2008 College World Series; the Bears will probably even be a solid club by the end of this season, but right now their inexperience is looming pretty large. Baylor started three freshman on Opening Day yesterday, the most since 1996 when they started four. Baylor’s crack sports information director Larry Little came up with this little chestnut: senior outfielder Chase Gerdes had 459 career at-bats entering the night, and the rest of the lineup combined for just 614. Gerdes alone accounted for 42.8 percent of Baylor’s at-bats. [...] Continue Reading »

The frigid weather inside Minute Maid Park did not deter fans of Houston and Texas A&M, who filled most of the lower level in the best-attended game of the Houston College Classic. The bundled-up Aggies fans might not have realized it, but the weather also might have helped their team beat the Cougars 3-2. [...] Continue Reading »