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Vanderbilt Picked Fourth in SEC by League Coaches 2/4/2005
Vanderbilt Picked Fourth in SEC by League Coaches Birmingham, Ala. – The Commodore baseball team is picked to finish fourth in the Southeastern Conference Eastern Division, as voted by the league’s 12 baseball coaches in the 14th annual preseason SEC poll released today. The Commodores return 20 lettermen, including five position starters and all but one pitcher from last season’s team that won a school record 45 games and advanced to the NCAA Super Regional for the first time in school history. Leading the way for the Commodores is the nation’s leading hitter, junior all-american second baseman Warner Jones and junior all-american left-hander Ryan Mullins who owned a team-leading 2.58 ERA. The LSU Tigers are the favorite to win the Southeastern Conference Baseball Championship. The Tigers seek to capture their 14th SEC Championship, having won or shared the title three times in the past nine seasons (1996, 1997 & 2003) and seven times since 1990. LSU returns six starters and all but one pitcher from their 2004 squad which advanced to the College World Series. Since 1996, the SEC has named a regular season champion as well as a tournament champion. Prior to 1996, the tournament champion was considered the SEC Champion. In the overall SEC Champion vote, LSU received nine of the 12 championship votes in the poll. South Carolina received two votes while Florida received one. In addition to picking a preseason SEC champion, the league’s head coaches voted a predicted order of finish in the SEC Eastern and Western Divisions. In the Eastern Division, South Carolina was the favorite with 63 points. Georgia came in second with 50 points and Florida third with 48 points. LSU was the predicted winner in the Western Division with a total of 66, collecting the maximum possible points for a single team. Ole Miss was second with 51, while Arkansas finished third with 46. Points were compiled on a 6-5-4-3-2-1 basis for each division. Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own team. Each coach also voted for one team as an overall conference champion. The 2005 season gets underway this weekend with Auburn hosting Hofstra in a three-game series at Plainsman Park. The conference schedule is set to begin the weekend of March 18-20. The 2005 SEC Tournament will be held May 25-29 at the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Ala. The 2004 SEC Baseball Tournament drew 75,259 fans, despite inclement weather. That total was the second highest conference tournament attendance in the country in 2004. Over 1.3 million fans attended regular season games in the SEC last season, the third year in a row the SEC has topped the one million mark in regular season attendance. |
