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Kallunki, Record-Setting Wolverines Left Out Of NCAA Tourney…

By College Baseball 360 Co-Editor Sean Stires

I went to bed last night thinking about Utah Valley. I don’t really know exactly why – I’ve only been to Utah once in my life. I’ve never even been to Orem, Utah where the school is located and I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that my wife was watching that show, Sister Wives, on TLC (She…ok we also used to watch Big Love on HBO. Go figure).

I specifically kept coming back to two things though: 1. That number:  47 and 2. That name:  Goose Kallunki.

Talk to me Goose…

And he did. Goose was talking to me and repeating that number over in my head.

47…47…47…47…47…47…

As in 47 wins.

Goose Kallunki hit .419 with 18 home runs and 86 RBIs this season.

Goose Kallunki, the best name in all of college baseball, helped Utah Valley win 47 games this season, but it wasn’t enough to get the three-time defending Great West Conference champions into the NCAA Tournament.

“Ultimately, it came down to non-conference competition and non-conference schedule strength,” NCAA Baseball Committee Chair Kyle Kallander said when I asked him about the Wolverine’s omission from this year’s field of 64.

“What you’ve gotta do is you’ve gotta go out in your non-conference schedule and you’ve gotta schedule stronger. And then of course you have to have some success against that schedule.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to sit here and rail on Kallander and the committee for leaving Utah Valley out of the tournament. There were plenty of teams that had even more impressive resumes than the Wolverines who are sitting home right now as well.

Kallander is correct when he points out Utah Valley’s weak schedule strength, which came in at 262 in the Warren Nolan rankings. That contributed to a Warren Nolan RPI of 72. That 72 though is still better than the 122, 135, 212, and 225 RPIs turned-in by Cornell, Creighton, Sacred Heart, and Prairie View, respectively. Those teams are all in the big dance, but the biggest difference is their conferences receive automatic bids for winning postseason tournaments, while the Great West Conference does not get a bid.

Prairie View and Cornell’s combined win total (51) barely tops Utah Valley’s 47 and their average schedule strength is 244.

Like most Ivy League teams Cornell doesn’t even play a full 56-game regular season schedule. The Big Red didn’t even play as many games (46) as Utah Valley won, and three of those games came in the Ivy Championship Series against Dartmouth two weeks ago. Cornell was winless in two tries against RPI top 50 teams this year, while Goose and the Wolverines had wins against both Arizona and Arizona State.

Turn and burn Maverick…

That takes me back to Goose Kallunki. I’ve never seen the guy hit in person and he may never get a cup of coffee in the show, but the kid flat out raked it as a senior in Orem this year. Here’s his offensive line:

.419 batting average, 18 home runs, 86 RBIs, .734 slugging percentage.

He’s in the top five in all of Division One baseball, while leading the nation with his RBI total. Those are impressive numbers no matter what the strength of schedule says. He wasn’t alone either. The Wolverines had a .350 batting average and smacked a total of 54 home runs.

Goose was also 5-for-8 with four RBIs and a home run in his two games against Arizona this season. The home run came in a 5-4 win over the then fourth-ranked Wildcats. That win came against the highest-ranked opponent the program had ever faced. The Wolverines were also swept in a three game series at Cal State Fullerton the first weekend of March.

It’s easy to say Utah Valley needs to get out and play a tougher non-conference schedule, but it’s another thing to do it. There aren’t exactly a wealth of Division One schools to play midweek games in and around Orem, which is located just north of Provo and BYU and south of Salt Lake City and the Utah Utes.

There’s a big lake and a lot of wide open space to the west of the school and a big mountain range to the right in Colorado, whose only Division one baseball program is Great West rival Northern Colorado. Good luck finding DI competition in neighboring Idaho or Wyoming.

Utah Valley played both of those teams this year and beat them both, although their 11-10 loss to the Utes on May 15 is probably what ultimately cost them an NCAA bid. That setback snapped the fourth longest winning streak in Division One history at 32 games. Had they won that day and gone on to win the rest of their regular season and conference tournament games they would have carried a 41-game winning streak into selection Monday that would have been all but impossible for the selection committee to disregard.

Utah Valley head coach Eric Madsen

Utah Valley head coach Eric Madsen has now won 141 games in his first four seasons at the helm, with 99 of them coming into the last two seasons. The Chicago States and New York Techs of the Great West Conference obviously don’t provide the kind of quality wins that other conferences would. If Madsen wants to take the Wolverines to the dance he’ll have to follow the blue print laid out by Ray Birmingham at New Mexico.

Kick down the front door.

New Mexico hadn’t been to the NCAA Tournament in nearly 50 years prior to receiving an at-large bid in 2010. The Lobos have lacked at-large credentials the last two years, but New Mexico has received automatic bids by winning the Mountain West Conference. They have built their resume and strengthened their resolve along the way by playing a who’s who of college baseball in their non-conference slates.

In case some of you are wondering who the best is, they are up here on this plaque…

Texas, USC, Arizona, Arizona state, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Oklahoma State are among them, with most of those games on the road.

Birmingham’s philosophy is simple – “Why try to go through the back door when you can kick down the front door?” Birmingham’s front door leads to the Los Angeles Regional this weekend when the Lobos face San Diego in the first round.

I know, I know. It’s not always as easily done as it is to say it. God knows college baseball budgets are tight, and it has to be even tighter as a place like Utah Valley where they don’t even have football to help prop-up the rest of the athletic department.

But hey, give LSU or Ole Miss a call and take a pay check series in Baton Rouge or Oxford next season. It paid-off for Appalachian State in more ways than one this year. Nobody saw the Mountaineers or Ryan Arrowood (another great name) coming when they took two of three from the eventual No. 7 national seed Tigers back in late February. The Mountaineers used those wins as a springboard to a 39-win season and a No. 3 seed facing Oklahoma this weekend in the Charlottesville Regional.

It’s all a moot point for Utah Valley now. They won 40 of their last 41 games and will have to settle for knowing they had a great year, while I’m stuck with that number in my head.

47…47…47…47…47…47…

Talk to me Goose…

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Why The Conference & Some Of Its Coaches Are Barking Up The Wrong Tree…

By College Baseball 360 co-editor Sean Stires

It looks like the Big Ten, or “BIG” as it likes to moniker itself, is at it again. According to an Associate Press report, there are two ideas being floated by two different Big Ten coaches that would pretty drastically change the way college baseball is played.

The AP attributes one of the ideas to ABCA Hall of Fame coach, John Anderson, of Minnesota. Anderson’s idea is for teams in his conference to stop beginning their seasons in February like the rest of college baseball. Instead, BIG would begin play much later and play out its 56-game regular season into summer – while the College World Series is being played, meaning Big Ten teams would give-up the chance to play in the NCAA Tournament altogether.

“We’re never going to catch those people,” Anderson is quoted saying in reference to the four SEC teams that played at last year’s CWS. “The system works for them, and they’re not going to want to change it.”

The other idea comes from Purdue head coach Doug Schreiber. His plan would be for the SEC to allow schools to play 14 non-conference games in the fall, with those games counting toward the team’s 56-game regular season limit and won-loss record the following spring. IE-Fall 2011 results would have counted toward the current 2012 season.

With respect to both Anderson and Schreiber, their ideas are not completely without merit. Just like the BIG has been doing for the last several years, they are looking for a solution that they think college baseball’s current system has handed them. They all argue that the current system is keeping BIG teams out of the chance to be in and host NCAA Tournament games.

To a certain extent they are correct. The problem is, they are barking up the wrong tree.

You see, the BIG wants it both ways. Its commissioner, Jim Delaney, and the people who run the schools in the conference will not allow their school’s head coaches to over-sign prospective recruits. The practice allows a coach a safety net when highly touted signees opt for professional contracts rather than going to college. The end result is rosters that have a hard time consistently competing with top-notch opponents.

That, along with early extended road trips and early losses leads to bad RPIs and, ultimately, fewer at-large NCAA bids. As cited in the AP article. BIG has received just a single NCAA bid six times since 1999, two bids four times and three bids on three occasions.

BIG wants us to believe it’s all the system’s fault, but there’s another northern conference that defies BIG’s argument- the Big East, which has sent three teams to the NCAA Tournament each of the last two years, while BIG has had just one each (Anderson’s Minnesota squad in 2010 and Illinois last year).

Connecticut, Seton Hall and St. John’s all went to the dance last year. There was hardly tropical weather in any of those locales when the 2011 season began, but they all did just fine.  BIG is also the conference that has a better BCS windfall, thanks to several years with multiple teams (Michigan and Wisconsin this year) in BCS bowl games.

What really irks BIG is not just the fact that Michigan’s 1984 team was the last school from the conference to reach the CWS, but also the idea that they don’t think there are enough northern schools hosting NCAA Regionals every year.

The problem with the latter argument is that hosting guarantees nothing. Ask national seed Rice last year. UConn hosted a regional two years ago, only to see Florida State advance all the way to Omaha. The Huskies started on the road in the Clemson Regional last year, upsetting the Tigers and advancing to the program’s first Super Regional.

There’s also the fact that other northern teams like Notre Dame, Nebraska, Missouri State, and even Oregon State have all been to Omaha in the last decade. Granted, Nebraska (which just left the Big 12 for BIG) and Oregon State both had the advantage of playing better teams in conference play, helping their RPIs. However, OSU beat Michigan in 2007 and Missouri State got past Ohio State in 2003 in Super Regionals to earn CWS berths.

Notre Dame rattled-off an unheard of eight straight NCAA appearances from 1999-2006 under then head coach Paul Mainieri. The foundation of his teams, which included future MLB pitchers Brad Lidge and Aaron Heilman in the late ‘90s, was pitching. Those two would have been teammates with current Chicago Cub Ryan Dempster had he not opted to go the pro route instead.

Mainieri’s Irish earned its CWS bid in 2002 after first beating Ohio State in the South Bend Regional and then going to Tallahassee and toppling No. 1 ranked Florida State (which carried a 25-game winning streak into the best of three series).

Delaney has tossed around the idea of a “Northern World Series” if the kind of “access” to the NCAA Tournament that he wants isn’t attained. That event could take place in the late summer if Anderson’s plan to push back his conference’s start date were to go into effect.

The event could even be televised. A Big Ten Network spokesperson told the AP “BTN will televise baseball wherever the Big Ten play it.” That is unless it’s at what the conference had hoped would be one of the premiere early season events, The Big East/Big Ten (or vice versa, depending on year) Challenge. Event organizers practically begged BTN to televise at least some games during the four year run of the Challenge to no avail.

I completely empathize with Big Ten coaches and the challenges they face. I have long said that it is ridiculous that with around 300 Division One college baseball teams (of which around half are northern) should start the season in February when pitchers and catchers are just reporting to spring training.

It is extremely challenging for every northern team to practice (mostly indoors) and hit the road for the first 3-4 weeks of every season, but it still no more challenging for Purdue or Michigan than it is for Notre Dame or Cincinnati. However, there was also a time (not so long ago) when there was no uniform start date to the college season. That set-up allowed warm weather schools to get double-digit games under their belts before the snowbird schools came south.

Give Schreiber credit though, he has put together a schedule that, if it wins 36 or so games, should be in the at-large discussion if it warrants at the end of the season. Purdue’s non-conference slate includes games against the like of East Carolina, Auburn, Southern Mississippi, Wichita State, Louisville, and a three-game series in May at UCLA. That doesn’t even include a Maryland team that has turned out to be pretty good so far.

Schreiber and Anderson are trying to help their teams and others in their conference. The problem is their conference needs to get out of their way.

After hearing from some coaches and readers the following was added after the initial post of this column:

As I hope I stated clearly enough (I know I have in the past anyway) the start of the season needs to be pushed back AT LEAST to the first weekend of March. Things will never be completely fair for northern teams as long as the college season starts before April. Schreiber’s plan to play 14 games in the fall is the best of these two options. Of the coaches I have talked to since this news broke, they favor that idea. One possibility could be putting both a minimum and a maximum number of fall games for all teams.

An idea we have mentioned here on CB360 before is allowing “exempt” fall games (exhibitions that would not count toward the 56-game limit) in an effort to give the college game more exposure, especially in the north where Big Ten schools and Big East schools with football could tie fall games in with a home football weekend. Playing regular season games in October would take it a step further, where schools like Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Cincinnati, Ohio State, and others could tie an entire weekend series in with a football weekend, thus killing three birds with one stone. They get to play some home games in the fall, they get more exposure for their baseball team and they don’t have to spend three weeks on the road in late February and March.

To be clear, the points northern coaches raise about the inequity of northern and southern teams in college baseball is valid. However, the Big Ten has more resources than any other northern conference, yet the conference has continually chosen to blame the NCAA for all of its woes rather than looking within at how it has hamstrung its baseball schools with self-imposed policies like not allowing over-signing and restricting junior college transfers to its baseball programs. (SS)

Some Things I’m Thinking About….

February is almost over, and that means just one thing to college baseball coaches, players and fans alike – it’s ping time! The season starts tomorrow and every team in the country, with maybe the exception of Arizona State (see below), starts with a clean slate.

Teams from Connecticut to Cal, Michigan (State if you prefer) to Miami, Oregon to Orlando (with both Stetson and UCF nearby), Tennessee to Texas, and nearly 300 points in between all have their sights set on Omaha.

South Carolina is the two-time defending champ, but a stocked Florida team is the unanimous No. 1 and wants to dethrone its SEC rival. Plenty of other non-SEC teams like Stanford, North Carolina and Texas A&M to name a few are all legitimate preseason threats to the Gamecock throne.

Before they get to the promised land though, they all have to navigate their own 56-game regular season gauntlets along the road to Omaha.

Most of them, like Arkansas-Little Rock and New Mexico last year, won’t have the regular season credentials for even the NCAA field of 64, but they’ll get their shot if they can roll the dice hard and come-up big with a postseason conference tournament title and the automatic NCAA bid that comes with it.

Who will be this season’s Jeremy Lin – the team or player to come out of nowhere –  and who will be this year’s Philadelphia Eagles – the team with all the preseason hype only to fall flat – ?

They’re all out there, we just don’t know who they are yet.

We’re thinking about all that and a lot more heading into 2012. Here’s a look at some of the other stuff on my own mind:

Let’s Start With Exposure

College baseball needs a dose of early season exposure. Pitchers and catchers are just starting to think about reporting to Spring Training, but the college game is starting en-masse this weekend – IN FEBRUARY.

College baseball reaches its crescendo in Omaha in June. That’s where guys like Trevor Bauer, Scott Wingo and Matt Curry (UCLA, South Carolina and TCU, respectively) get their shots at the national stage – when the games are on ESPN and people around the country are watching. The conundrum is, once the College World Series is over most of those college baseball heroes fade from the memory of the casual fan.

It’s hard enough to catch lightening in a bottle, let alone keep it there for eight months, but why not give it a shot?

Take those eight teams that got to Omaha at the end of the season and gather them to start the next season – and put it on TV.

Can you see it? The 2012 Road To Omaha First Pitch Challenge – with South Carolina, Virginia, Cal, and Texas A&M in one pool and Florida, Vanderbilt, North Carolina, and Texas in another pool.

You wouldn’t play out the entire double-elimination tournament like the CWS format, just a pair of four-team round robins. Each team gets three teams in three days.

Big names, which all got maximum exposure at the end of the last season, big early interest.

Play the games at Dodgers Stadium and/or Anaheim and it’s easy programming for MLB Network. As much as I like MLB Network, it would be much better than watching Prime 9 on a loop all weekend!

It is college, so some of the names and faces will be a little different, but as Tommy Lasorda would tell you, the name on the fronts of the jerseys will be the same.

It’s not so crazy. Now, can we just make it happen?!

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SEC Dominance

As college baseball fans know, it’s not just a football conference. The left coast doesn’t want to hear it, but the claims of the SEC’s dominance of college baseball are not greatly exaggerated. It is somewhat staggering to look at just how good the conference is when it comes to success at the College World Series. Start with the fact that all 11 players named to last year’s CWS All-Tournament Team were from the SEC, and throw-in the fact that with South Carolina’s back-to-back titles the last two years the conference has now won three straight national titles (LSU – 2009).

A total of 46 SEC teams have advanced to Omaha since 1990, with LSU at the head of the pack at 12 trips. Florida (6), South Carolina (5), Georgia (5), Mississippi State (4), Alabama (3), Tennessee (3), Auburn (2) and Arkansas (2) have each gone multiple times in the last two decades as well. The Bayou Bengals have won six of the conference’s nine national championships in that time, with Georgia (1990) and South Carolina (2010 & 2011) claiming the other three. South Carolina, Florida and Vanderbilt were the conference’s three CWS representatives in 2011, and all three were among the last four teams remaining at the event.

While last year was the SEC’s high water mark in that regard, the conference has failed to have at least one team among the last four alive in Omaha just five times since 1990.

The SEC just keeps getting tougher as well, with Dave Serrano leaving Cal State Fullerton to claim Tennessee as his new address. Serrano is one of 11 coaches to ever lead two programs to the College World Series (current Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn and LSU’s Paul Mainieri are part of the club as well). Serrano took UC Irvine to the 2007 CWS and then led Fullerton to Omaha two years later.

CLICK HERE to listen to a preseason podcast with LSU head coach Paul Mainieri.

CLICK HERE to listen to a preseason podcast with Florida OF Preston Tucker.

Speaking Of New Addresses

Vanderhook

Rick Vanderhook begins his first season as head coach at Cal State Fullerton in 2012, but he is anything but unfamiliar with the land of the Titans. Vanderhook, who spent the last three seasons as an assistant at UCLA, is just the fifth head coach in program history.

Vanderhook was an assistant coach for a total of 21 seasons in Fullerton under the previous four head coaches: Augie Garrido, Larry Cochell, George Horton, and Serrano, so don’t look for the Titans’ offensive philosophy to change. Vanderhook inherits a lot of returning experience offensively, but he’ll need to replace a ton of pitching, including Noe Ramirez and Tyler Pill are gone from the weekend rotation, and two-way player (and closer) Nick Ramirez.

Arizona State Is Out

After sending six teams to the NCAA Tournament last year, one thing is certain in 2012 – if the Pac-12 gets six bids this year Arizona State will not be among them. After 12 straight NCAA appearances, the Sun Devils are banned from the 2012 NCAA postseason for infractions that were committed under former head coach Pat Murphy’s watch. ASU advanced to the College World Series in current head coach Tim Esmay’s first season in 2010 and fell to Texas in Super Regional play in Austin last year.

The argument can be made that most, if not all, of the players on this year’s roster were not even around when the actual infractions (lack of institutional control by the school) took place. That’s fair, but don’t forget that ASU was allowed to participate in last year’s NCAA Tournament while the appeals process took place. A higher percentage of those player, who played for Murphy, were there when the infractions took place.

Bottom line, it’s not a good situation for anyone and this year’s probation is step one in the moving on process.

Going Golden Bear Hunting

Cal's tumultuous 2011 season ended in Omaha

At this time last year Cal and head coach David Esqeur were just trying to keep the program alive. What a difference a year makes. After not only managing to Save Cal Baseball, Esquer managed to take his Golden Bears all the way to Omaha for the first time in nearly 20 years. Cal was the feel good story of 2011, but that CWS trip puts a bigger target on their backs this year.

“I hope we have that bull’s eye on our back,” Cal pitcher Justin Jones recently told College Baseball 360. “We’ll have to see how that plays out and see what happens I guess. We now know what it takes to get there to Omaha, and it’s really helped with the practice, the preparation and the hard work we all put in. Now we know that what was once kind of out of the reach is now in our reach. It’s in our eyesight. We feel like we can reach it every year now.”

Cal’s run to the CWS gives the Pac-12 six teams that have played in the CWS since 2004, along with Oregon State, Arizona State, UCLA, Stanford, and Arizona. The Cinderella run is the stuff of movies and, more importantly, what college athletics is all about. By the way, Jones says he would want Johnny Depp to play him if they were to make a movie.

CLICK HERE to listen to a preseason podcast with Cal’s Justin Jones.

Conference Confusion

While baseball is an afterthought when it comes to all the shuffling in college conferences, the landscape of the sport will be affected greatly by all of the movement. Nowhere have things been more volatile than the Big 12 Conference, where who is staying and who is leaving have been the biggest questions over the last couple years.

First, Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten and Colorado moved out west for Pac-10/12 expansion. The latter didn’t affect baseball, but the loss of the Cornhuskers means a three time College World Series team is gone to even farther northern climes.

While Utah does not immediately make the conference tougher on the diamond, Bill Kinneberg does bring a solid program with him to an already tough conference. The addition of Utah also means all 11 current Pac-12 baseball teams have made the NCAA Tournament field at least once since 2004. Kinneberg led the 2010 USA Collegiate National Team to a silver medal performance at the 2010 World University Championships. His Utes also finished their last season in the Mountain West Conference with 29 wins. Kinneberg’s roots in the Pac-10 run deep. He was a member of Arizona’s 1980 national championship team and was also an assistant coach on Arizona State’s 1993 and ’94 CWS squads.

Texas, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State flirted with the Pac-12, but ultimately stayed put. Meanwhile, Texas A&M and then Missouri decided it was time to jump for the SEC. Those two teams will play one last season in the Big 12 in 2012, but don’t expect any touchy-feely send-offs for them in their swan song season. Things could be as bitter as ever when the two rivals square-off for possibly the last time Apr. 27-29.

TCU and West Virginia will take their place. The Horned Frogs are a year removed from an Omaha trip, while the Mountaineers – a team that has traditionally been long on offense but pitching thin – have not been to the NCAA Tournament since 1996.  What it all means the immediate future is nine baseball teams competing in the Big 12 in 2012.

Other conferences will see more shuffling as well. Hawaii will come aboard as a Big West member for the 2013 season, while San Diego State joins-up in 2014(though SDSU football is Big East bound) . Cal State Bakersfield and Texas State will join the WAC, Memphis, Houston and Central Florida are leaving Conference USA for the Big East, Fresno State is leaving the WAC for the Mountain West, and of course the Mountain West and Conference USA just announced plans to merge. Former DI Independent Dallas Baptist, which advanced to the program’s first Super Regional last year, is playing in the Missouri Valley Conference this year, but will head to the WAC next year.

It’s not confusing at all…

Is Virginia here to stay?

Brian O'Connor doing an interview at the 2011 CWS

Brian O’Connor has led his Cavaliers to the College World Series in two of the last three years, but the challenge to get there again will be even greater in the near future. O’Connor’s recruiting has been nothing short of phenomenal since taking over the program in 2004, but arguably his biggest recruit – Danny Hultzen – is now gone. Hultzen was a freshman on UVA’a 2009 CWS squad and ended his career with a school record 32 wins before being the second overall pick (Seattle Mariners) in the 2011 MLB Draft. While he is the biggest man to replace, there are other holes to fill as well.”

“From a pitching standpoint off last year’s team, we lost 70 percent of our innings,” O’Connor told CB360 of his turnover. “We lost three guys that threw over 100 innings and another pitcher that threw over 75 innings.”

Branden Kline is the biggest name back from the ’11 CWS squad. He shined last year with 18 saves, while moving from midweek starter to closer. O’Connor told College Baseball 360 that Kline will start the new season in the weekend rotation, but could return to the closer role if other starters emerge.

Pitching isn’t the only pressing need O’Connor has entering 2012. His top four statistical hitters from last year are departed as well, but he said he is ready for the new challenge.

“As a coach, you can look at it in one of two ways. You can be concerned about that or you can look forward to it.”

O’Connor added that he had fun this past fall seeing a lot of new faces in new places.

“I love that challenge as a coach of trying to get those young people to the next level of being able to perform every day and be somebody that can really be counted on at a high level of college baseball”

Consistency in the coaching staff has been a key to Virginia’s success as well. Associate head coach, Kevin McMullen, and pitching coach, Karl Kuhn, are entering their ninth year with O’Connor on the Cavalier staff.

CLICK HERE to listen to a preseason podcast with Brian O’Connor.

O’Brien Stepping-up To The Big Stage

Peter O'Brien

After three great seasons at Bethune-Cookman, Peter O’Brien should provide instant impact after transferring to Miami for his final year of eligibility. The NCAA ruled recently that O’Brien will be allowed to play immediately. The  catcher batted .304 with 14 home runs and 69 RBIs in 2011.

The 6’5, 225 lb. senior was the MEAC Player of the Year in 2010 and went on to play for the USA Collegiate National Team that summer. O’Brien was selected in the third round of the 2011 MLB Draft, but turned down the chance to turn pro for a year in Coral Gables and the ACC.

New Addresses, More Uncertainty For Many Teams…

By Collegebaseball360.com Editor Sean Stires

It’s all about football (and BCS money), but the latest round of conference shuffling – brought to you by the Big East Conference – will ripple through college baseball as well.

As of this writing, an official announcement is apparently imminent that Boise State, San Diego State, Houston, Central Florida (UCF), and Southern Methodist (SMU) will all join the Big East to bolster its sinking BCS football status. Boise State and San Diego State would join as football only members, while the other three would be full fledged Big East members in all sports. The planned moves would go into effect for the 2013-2014 academic year.

We’re not going to go into all of the football implications. You can find that on 800 other sites. We also won’t touch the irony that the new look “Big East” will include schools that are not even remotely in the “east”.

The question we are most concerned with is:  How does all this affect college baseball?

First, neither Boise State nor SMU have baseball teams, so those schools are out of this discussion (how SMU does not have a baseball team though is a head-scratcher). So, let’s start out west and work our way back east to look at how this latest conference shuffle will affect the college baseball landscape.

San Diego State currently plays in the Mountain West Conference in all sports. Since the Aztecs are joining the Big East in football only, the other sports are in line for a new landing spot. According to multiple reports, that landing spot will be the Big West Conference.

It’s a move that would make perfect sense for Tony Gwynn‘s baseball team. The farthest his team would travel for a conference game would be Hawaii (set to join the Big West for the 2013 season) every other year, rather than current jumps to Colorado Springs, Albuquerque and Ft. Worth.

Gwynn would also add another big name to the coaching ranks in the conference. The Big West already includes another former Big Leaguer – Ed Sprague (Pacific) – as well as Hall of Famer Mike Gillespie (UC Irvine) and a hot up and comer – Rick Vanderhook (Cal State Fullerton) – who is returning to his roots after helping UCLA reach the College World Series as an assistant.

The conference that will feel the most ill effects from all the maneuvering is the Mountain West. The conference, which has been somewhat underrated when it comes to college baseball anyway, has just five teams – Air Force, New Mexico, San Diego State, TCU, and UNLV – that will field baseball teams in 2012.

TCU, which was originally set to join the Big East, will leave the Mountain West after the current season to align with the Big 12. Fresno State and Nevada have agreed to leave the WAC for the MWC next year, but they could easily reconsider that move considering there will be no Boise State and no San Diego State in two years. And don’t forget, Utah left the MWC to help form the Pac-12 this season, while BYU left the conference for football independence, while baseball and other BYU sports are now in the WCC.

As it stands, the Mountain West would be left with just Air Force, New Mexico, UNLV and possibly Fresno State in 2014. Odds are those schools will either all be somewhere else or the MWC will align with another conference – the WAC? – before then.

From a baseball standpoint, it’s just a shame. The MWC, especially with the addition of Fresno State, was shaping into what would have been a great conference. The Bulldogs won the 2008 national championship, TCU went to Omaha in 2010, New Mexico is coming off back-to-back NCAA appearances, and Utah and San Diego State have each gone to NCAA regionals in the last three years as well.

Moving east…

Houston and UCF will leave Conference USA to join the Big East in all sports, including baseball starting with the 2014 baseball season.

Houston has experienced an NCAA drought in recent years. The Cougars were a win away from a Super Regional in 2008, but that is their only NCAA appearance over the last five seasons. Houston improved from 25 wins to 27 victories in Todd Whittling’s first season as head coach in 2011.

UCF has made upward movement in head coach Terry Rooney‘s three seasons as head coach after helping LSU reach the CWS as an assistant in 2008. The Knights were one of four C-USA teams to receive an NCAA bid in 2011.

The move to the Big East for those two schools comes as Syracuse and Pittsburgh head to the ACC and West Virginia exits to the Big 12. Syracuse does not have baseball, while neither Pitt nor WVU have sniffed the NCAA Tournament in nearly two decades.

The argument can be made that the addition of two southern schools like UCF (located in Orlando) and Houston will make the Big East a better baseball conference. That argument was made when South Florida (USF-located in Tampa) joined the Big East after the 2005 season, but it hasn’t turned out that way.

USF has not received an NCAA bid in its six seasons as a Big East member. The Bulls compiled a 7-10 record at the Big East Tournament from 2006-2010, but did not qualify for the Big East’s postseason tournament in 2011.

Meanwhile, northern teams in the same conference have been more successful in that stretch. Notre Dame, Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. John’s, and UConn (all dugout space heater spots in March and early April) have all received NCAA bids since 2006, while UConn advancing to the program’s first Super Regional this past season. Louisville also earned NCAA bids from 2007-2010, but the Cardinals are the only Big East school not in Florida to play home games in February.

The losses of Houston and UCF leaves C-USA with seven baseball playing schools, while the net for the Big East is unchanged at 12 baseball schools (lose Pitt and West Virginia and gain UCF and Houston).

Other smaller conferences are set to shuffle as well. UT San Antonio and Texas State (as well as Denver, which doesn’t play baseball) will soon join the WAC. Houston Baptist will join the Southland after leaving the Great West Conference (a conference that does not an automatic NCAA bid), while Oral Roberts will leave the Summit League for the Southland Conference.

Dallas Baptist, which went all the way to a Super Regional in 2011 as a DI Independent, joined the Missouri Valley Conference this year, but will leave to join the WAC for the 2012-2013 season.

Nebraska is also in its first season in the Big Ten after leaving the Big 12 after last season, while Missouri and Texas A&M will jump to the SEC next year. As of now, the only change in the ACC will be the addition of Pitt.

The X-factor in the entire situation is the BCS contract will likely be redone prior to the 2013-2014 season, so this latest move by the Big East might not even keep the conference in the BCS.

Confused?

The only certainty in any of this is – there is bound to be much more uncertainty before the smoke clears.

Here’s a look at how many of the aforementioned conferences are currently aligned and how they will potentially look in 2014. Keep in mind that seemingly every move is tentative and all of this could be moot before any of the changes actually take place.

Potential College Baseball 2014 Conference Baseball Alignment