TCU jumped out to a 10-0 lead and went on to defeat BYU, 13-6, in Thursday’s only game involving a CB360 top-50 team (the Frogs are #9 in the Composite National Rankings). CollegeBaseball360.com has welcomed a new contributor, Stephen Francis, from Examiner.com‘s Ft. Worth Edition. His series preview is posted below, under the links to tonight’s TCU-BYU opener.

• at #9 TCU 13, BYU 6  |  Final Stats
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TCU-BYU SERIES PREVIEW
By Stephen Francis

FT. WORTH, Texas – The TCU baseball team kicks off their 2010 Mountain West Conference schedule Thursday night as the BYU Cougars come to town.  If the out-of-conference schedule is any indication, Frog fans are in store for a fun ride as league competition begins.

The 13-2 Horned Frogs enter the series ranked fourth in the nation by Baseball America [and 9th in the CB360 Composite National Rankings] and are a perfect 7-0 at Lupton Stadium this season. Through the first 15 games, it’s the second-best start in team history and the best since 1985’s team went  19-1 to start the year  (that team went 14-1 in their first 15). The 2010 Frogs’ only losses have come on the road at Cal State Fullerton, where they won the other two games of the series, and at a neutral site against perennial power Rice. Fullerton was ranked in most major college baseball polls at the time and Rice was (and is) currently ranked.

As if that’s not enough, the Horned Frogs have won five in a row and taken nine of their last 10 ball games. The TCU nation could not ask for a better start to the season, which has built a solid RPI ranking and given TCU an inside track at a Regional tournament berth, and even a solid possibility of qualifying as a host team for a Regional round and maybe even a Super Regional. However, that all won’t happen without a respectable conference run. Cue BYU.

The Cougars come into Thursday night’s game with a 7-9 record and unranked. Take care though not to be fooled by the losing record. They’ve shown some signs of brilliance this season, winning at Baylor on March 2 and taking two of three from UC-Davis and finding themselves on the “good” side of the scoreboard in four of the past six games. The rebuttal, though, is that they lost two of three to UT-Arlington, whom TCU defeated 15-2 last Tuesday.  READ MORE …