D3baseball.com Daily Dose

We don’t have a live audio page set up yet but Division III baseball broadcasts are starting up already, and Occidental has a live audio broadcast on Saturday as La Verne travels to Occidental.

It’s a 1:30 PST start, 4:30 Eastern. Both teams are well out of the gate with eight games under their belt: Occidental comes in at 6-2, 3-1 SCIAC while La Verne is 2-6, 1-0.

On the call is Craig Dunkin, who spent three years calling minor league baseball, including the Class A Yakima Bears. He’s better known in Division III circles, however, as the voice of Occidental football and basketball. And better known in D3sports.com circles as a guy who sounds like me on the air.

Anyway, if readers have other links to games, feel free to post them here in the comments.

A successful lead off with the D3baseball.com with 20,000 visitors to date. Yes the site for all your D3 baseball needs has been well received in its first week

The northeast corner of our nation is still in practice mode but a few teams are starting to make a trip to play a little baseball. Wesley (1-0) started the season with a win against St. Mary’s and Rowan (2-1) took 2 out of three on a road trip to Virginia. There is still is several weeks before all are out on the diamond and I know the fans are anxious to hear the crack of the bat (or is it a ping).

The South region continues to see a lot of action. Averett is the first 10 game-winner in the nation as they explode to a 12-1 record. They face a stiff test this weekend in my game of the week as they start their conference schedule at homed against Christopher Newport. Players of the week are Trea Bailey, CNU and Travis Reynolds, Averett. Bailey .467 (7-for-15) with seven RBI, three doubles and one triple as the Captains went 3-1 last week. Reynolds appeared in three games last week and earned two victories, including a seven-inning complete-game in a 10-1 victory over Neumann. In the win, Reynolds did not allow an earned run while giving up four hits and striking out nine batters. .In the Capital AC, Salisbury (4-1) is riding a 4 game win streak. In the Great South AC all four teams got their first win last week, going 9-5 since my last report. Virginia Wesleyan (3-0) in the Old Dominion AC has all their wins against ranked teams - first Salisbury, then Rowan, now a victory against the region favorite, NC Wesleyan. Rhodes (4-1) and Millsaps (5-2) hold the top spot in the Southern Collegiate AC with conference play not yet started. Nathan Skeen, Hendix and Robert Flanagan, Rhodes were players of the week in the SCAC. Flanagan (3-0, 0.92 ERA) pitched a gem against 13th-ranked Millsaps as the Lynx upset the Majors 8-5. He worked 7.2 innings, giving up just two hits and no earned runs while allowing just a walk and striking out seven to earn his third win of the season. Skeen had six hits in 11 trips to the plate (.545) and knocked in the winning run in the 10th inning in Hendrix’s 6-5 win against Rhodes on Friday, and on Sunday, knocked in the winning run in the ninth inning against Sewanee.

The Mideast, Central and Midwest regions are all preparing for their spring trips to points south.

The action in the west was in Texas as the Texas Lutheran Bulldogs (7-0) gave their coach, Bill Miller, his 500th victory. Joining Texas Lutheran in as an unbeaten is Texas-Tyler (5-0). Brett Amyx, Texas Tyler and Marcus Volz, Mary Hardin-Baylor were the hitters of the week while Andrew Cantrell, East Texas Baptiost and Nick Schafer, McMurry were pitchers of the week in the American Southwest Conference. Amyx was 6-7 with 3 hone runs and eight RBI and Volz was 10-16 with 3 stolen bases. Cantrell and Schafer allowed just a single run in their games this weekend. Cantrell got a complete-game five-hitter against Mary Hardin-Baylor and Schafer handed Chapman their only loss of the season scatting five hits in eight innings of work. The Chapman Panthers (9-1) continue to roll with 2 of 3 from McMurray over the weekend. Kyle Reading (.559) and Kurt Yako (.475, 18 RBI) have continue their hot hitting this season. George Fox (5-0) continues to be unbeaten, although they are a game behind Lewis and Clark (2-4) in the conference, with Lewis and Clark’s only two wins against conference foe, Willamette.

Game of the Week: Christopher Newport at Averett
Last week: George Fox 12, Redlands 2. Bringing back memories of their last meeting in the 2006 NCAA Division III West Regional, the George Fox University Bruins blasted the University of Redlands Bulldogs 12-2. Chris Albrecht (1-0) was the winning pitcher last year when the Bruins defeated the Bulldogs 10-3 in the opening game of the regional, and he was on the mound again for the Bruins’ Desert Classic win. The senior southpaw was superb, throwing seven shutout innings while scattering six hits, walking none, and striking out three. The Bruins banged out 12 hits to defeat righthander Pat Whalen (0-1), breaking open a tight 1-0 game with a five-run outburst in the 4th. Drew Johnson dropped a bases-loaded bunt for a single for the first run, and Dan Wentzell and Matt Wyckoff added two-run singles later in the frame. Wentzell slugged a tape-measure two-run homer, and Ryan Fobert added a solo home run.

Chapman defeated McMurry last night, 13-7, scoring in all innings but the seventh and getting seven strong innings from 2006 All-American Devin Drag.

I will be traveling to Abilene this afternoon for the doubleheader.

Here the sun is shining and snow still blankets the ground but the 2007 Division III Baseball season has begun. Two no hitters are already in the books as I clear the bases for the first time.

Most teams are preparing for their spring trips but there is some baseball being played in the South and West regions this week. A few NJAC teams (Rowan, Rutgers-Newark, Rutgers-Camden) are heading south to play teams in the ODAC and USA South.

Four teams in the USA South have had good starts. Methodist (4-0) and Christopher Newport (3-0) are at the top with NC Wesleyan (6-1) and Averett (6-1) close behind. Both NC Wesleyan and Averett started 6-0 but losses to Mt Olive (NCW) and Hamden-Sydney (Averett) knocks them out of the ranks of the unbeaten. In the season opener, Blake Rice threw a no-hitter against Frostburg State. Rice stuck out 7 and walked 2 in a 7 inning 2-0 win. Rice was chosen as the Athlete of the Week in the UAS South for his accomplishments.

The SCAC is off and running as three teams emerge with unbeaten records. Oglethorpe (3-0), Rhodes (3-0), and Millsaps (3-0), start the season with perfect records. Outfielder Hunter Owen, Millsaps was the SCAC player of the week with 2 HR, 5 runs and 5 RBI in two games last week.

In the ODAC, Virginia Wesleyan (1-0) starts off the season with a win against Salisbury. The baseball gods were not kind to the Great South AC as the conference went 0-10 to start the season.

In the ASC, Texas Lutheran starts the season 4-0 and heads on the road for a DH against Huston-Tillotson. Bulldog’s Jacob Kaase, SS, hit .583 with 6 runs, 2 walks, and 3 RBI to be named the ASC West Hitter of the Week. West Pitcher of the Week was RB Garza from Mary Baylor Hardin with 2 saves in 4.6 innings of work. Garza did not allow a run with 5 strikeouts. The second no-hitter of the short season was Ozark’s Ted Kock’s gem. Kock, ASC East Pitcher of the Week, beat Principia in the Eagle’s season opener (sound familiar) with 9 strikeouts in only the second Ozark no-no in modern day history. Kock’s teammate, Andrew Teaster was the ASC East Hitter of the Week. The Ozark first baseman hit .900 with 2 doubles, 2 triples, and 3 RBI. Ozark finshed the week 3-2.

Rounding out the west region, Lewis and Clark (2-0), Geoege Fox (1-0), Linfield (1-0), Redlands (1-0) and Chapman (6-0) start the season undefeated. Chapman has shown mid season form with a .373 batting aveara and a 2.33 ERA though their first 6 games of the season.

My pick for game of the week is George Fox at Redlands (Friday 16 Feb) as two top teams in the west try to stay unbeaten.

Josh Centor, a former baseball player at Brandeis, runs the NCAA’s blog, called the Double-A Zone. As such, he is one of the few college sports bloggers (D3sports.com company excluded) who pays any attention to Division III and does so with any expertise whatsoever.

A recent post focuses on a former D-III baseball player, minor leaguer and assistant coach getting his first head coaching job. It’s Cliff Smith, who left his assistant job at Bowdoin and took over at Elizabethtown this past offseason.

Organizing a Florida trip, ordering equipment, managing a fund-raising budget, and finding qualified assistant coaches were just a few things that had to be accomplished in just a short three-week span. Add those things to the fun stuff of organizing practices, getting to know 27 players, and preparing to play a competitive schedule and the task can feel a little daunting. Personally you also have to adjust to being outside of you support system, with a family and girlfriend that are now eight hours away.

Read the full blog post here.

For many years, people have asked when I would be doing D3baseball.com. The answer was always “never.”

There were many reasons, and a couple of excuses.

For many years, I worked at Baseball Weekly. While that didn’t have any conflict with running D3hoops.com and D3football.com, it could be perceived as a conflict of interest to be running a baseball Web site on the side.

Compiling scores for Division III baseball teams would be impossible, I would tell people. There are 365 or so schools playing Division III baseball. They play 40 games. That in and of itself wouldn’t be so impossible if it weren’t for the fact that you can’t count on games to be played when scheduled.

Darn weather.

I wouldn’t have time to run a Division III baseball site, I would say. I value my offseason, which starts at the end of March and runs through the beginning of July or so. When would I see my family?

But then Jim Dixon approached me in the middle of 2006 with the solution to all of those problems. (Or most of them, anyway.) And now Jim’s site, which you knew previously as Division III Baseball Online, has joined the D3sports.com family and has been renamed D3baseball.com.

I don’t work at Baseball Weekly anymore. (Heck, Baseball Weekly doesn’t really exist anymore.) Jim runs the site. And schedules and results … well, we still won’t be tracking them. Our partnership with D3Scoreboard.com will give us an outlet to print scores for some conferences — just the conferences that subscribe to D3Scoreboard.com — starting in 2008.

And so here we are, at D3baseball.com. Jim Dixon is the managing editor of the site and is responsible for its content. Ryan Coleman has been building the technology for the site and I’ll handle the administration end and contribute to building out the database of information on each school.

And you, the fans, will flock — we hope. Spread the word. Make sure your fellow Division III baseball fans know we’re here. Because I think this is going to be a lot of fun.