Three Strikes
Quick impressions on the weekend in college baseball

by Will Kimmey
March 27, 2006

Strike One: JC jump start

Entering the season, it seemed as if a great deal of South Carolina's success would depend on how its freshman class fared. Coach Ray Tanner joked that he needed top recruits Justin Smoak and Reese Havens to play like juniors. Well, those two are batting .266 and .256, but here's South Carolina at 22-3, 5-1 and tied for first place in the Southeastern Conference. How? Why? Look to success in the junior college recruiting race, which has often paid dividends for South Carolina in recent years with all-SEC players including Chad Blackwell, Billy Buckner, Steve Pearce and Yaron Peters.

Seniors Neil Giesler and Chris Brown joined the program in 2005 but have really gotten hot this year. Giesler hit .254-6-24 as a junior, but a 17-game hit streak has him at .506-2-21 and leading the SEC in batting. Brown's .375 average is about 100 points better than his mark a year ago. Cheyne Hurst (.358) and Robbie Grinestaff (team highs of eight homers and 32 RBIs) are excelling as members of this year's JC class. Hurst and Grinestaff drove in five runs apiece in the 21-4 win that capped South Carolina's weekend sweep of Florida.

Strike Two: Colonial Times

George Mason mauled everyone's NCAA basketball brackets by advancing to the Final Four, and now those pesky baseballers of the Colonial Athletic Association are knocking on the Top 25's door. Old Dominion has won 14 games in a row and is 25-3 overall, while James Madison authored a 16-game win streak as part of its 19-5 start. Both teams are 9-0 in the conference after missing the CAA tournament last year. They meet this weekend at Old Dominion in a well-timed showdown.

ODU's start matches its 1994 club for the best start to a season since moving to Division I in 1977. Current Florida coach Pat McMahon guided the Monarchs then, and now it's Jerry Meyers, in his second year after serving as South Carolina's pitching coach for eight seasons. Like at South Carolina, Meyers' rotation racks up the strikeouts: senior righthander Kevin Gunter (4-2, 3.64) has recorded 45 strikeouts in 47 innings, junior righty Jason Godin (6-0, 3.74) has 59 in 53 innings and freshman righthander Dan Hudson (4-0, 1.85) has 39 in 44 innings.

James Madison has slugged its way to most of its wins thus far (with 13 homers and counting for Kellen Kulbacki), but also showed it could pitch a little over the weekend. Junior righthander Travis Miller and senior lefthander Greg Nesbitt threw consecutive four-hit complete-game shutouts against Virginia Commonwealth before sophomore righty Ryan Reid allowed his ration of four hits over eight innings to complete the sweep.

Strike Three: Finally, TV

ESPN released its schedule of regular season telecasts for 2006. Now, wait a minute as we yawn. The 12-game schedule features only one game on ESPN, with all the rest on ESPNU. By comparison, last year's slate comprised 35 games, with 19 on ESPN or ESPN2 and 16 on ESPNU. The need to fill air time created by the NHL strike led to last season's largesse, and while the ratings weren't insane, cutting 22 games off the overall schedule and 18 from the national networks seems a bit much if ESPN was hoping to build a following leading up to its postseason coverage. This year's slate also offers fewer sexy matchups when compared to last year's. And while fans of the Metro Atlantic Athletic and Southwestern Athletic conferences might enjoy their air time, these are hardly games that will shed much light on the race to Omaha.

March 31	Texas at Oklahoma	ESPNU
April 1	Texas at Oklahoma	ESPNU
April 2	Texas at Oklahoma	ESPNU
April 14	Birmingham-Southern at Coastal Carolina	ESPNU
April 16	Missouri State at Wichita State	ESPNU
April 25	Purdue at Notre Dame	ESPNU
April 29	Alcorn State at Jackson State	ESPNU
April 30	Delaware State at North Carolina A&T	ESPNU
May 12	Tennessee at South Carolina	ESPNU
May 13	Tennessee at South Carolina	ESPN
May 13	High Point at Winthrop	ESPNU
May 27	Big East Tournament Championship	ESPNU

AROUND THE NATION

• Long Beach State has lost seven straight games and stands 12-15 on the year. It hasn't been under .500 this late in the season since the program adopted the nickname Dirtbags in 1989. There was some good news in Bagland, however, as junior third baseman Evan Longoria, who left Sunday's game after getting hit in the head by a Dustin Miller pitch, suffered no ill effects and will play this weekend against UC Irvine.

• Fear the Turtle. Maryland stopped James Madison's win streak at 16 games Wednesday before ending Miami's 16-game streak on Saturday. Fresno State (15), Old Dominion (14) and West Virginia (13) own the nation's longest active streaks, and ODU plays host to Maryland on Wednesday.

• Shoulder tendinitis cost Missouri junior righthander Max Scherzer his second consecutive start over the weekend. The Tigers still beat Kansas State twice in three games.

• Michigan freshman righthander Zach Putnam earned his first career win Friday by holding Oakland to two unearned runs on two hits over five innings. Older brother Dylan Putnam had a great view of Zach's five strikeouts--he's Oakland's first-year head coach.

• From the stats are fun department comes this nugget: Western Carolina junior catcher Blake Murphy drove in 19 runs last week, including 10 in a Tuesday doubleheader. He totaled 12 RBIs in all of 2005. Despite that, he couldn't even win one of those superfluous conference player of the week awards as the Southern Conference went with teammate Trey McDaniel's week of three homers, 13 runs, 12 RBIs and nine walks.

• Arkansas used its third- and fourth-string second basemen in a series loss to Georgia. Ben Tschepikow is out indefinitely with a back injury, and freshman James Ewing will miss at least three weeks with a stress fracture in his foot. Stephen Robison and Logan Forsythe manned the spot in their stead.