Ron:

The 2010 Trinity team had a BA of .376 (they had 3 players that batted over.400) and led the country in runs scored.

I remember my son's senior year playing baseball at Trinity (before the founding of the SAA). During the last four weeks of their season, they made three trips right before finals. They traveled to Conway (Hendrix) and Jackson (Millsaps) on back-to-back weekends, both 15-hour bus rides. Then two weeks later they flew to Memphis (Millington) for the conference championship. My son shared with me that it had an adverse impact on his schoolwork and grades.

When the SAA was created and the SCAC "scrambled" to reconstitute itself; I thought it was great for the kid's education and likely meant more financial resources for the baseball program (less travel).

Joining the SAA for Trinity and Southwestern is going to be very expensive. The closest schools for the two Texas teams are Millsaps and Hendrix, both of which are 15+ hour bus trips. To get to any of the other SAA schools you have to commit to flying. This will require a huge increase in budget. It will also likely force the programs to limit "participation" to a travel squad of say 25 players for baseball. This is a fundamental change from how these programs have operated for the past 10 years.

Now take this increased cost and apply it across all the sports that these schools sponsor. You could be looking at an increased travel budget for each school that could approach $300K-$500K per year.

I really liked the competition in the "old SCAC", however, will the kids get a better experience, and will the Texas schools benefit from committing to compete against schools that really can not be reached via weekend bus trips?

I really don't see this being good for the students and the universities; someone please explain it to me.

Interesting announcement today; Trinity and Southwestern will be joining the SAA in 2015. Effectively, this is the "old SCAC" with Berry and without Austin. It was a little over 10-years ago that the SAA schools broke off from the Texas schools to form the SAA. My recall was the SAA schools did not like all the travel to Texas. I wonder what changed?

It will be a color coded Saturday, the Burgundy game followed by the Yellow/Black game.

D3 Baseball finally named Tim Scannell coach of the year.

http://d3baseball.com/awards/all-americans/d3baseball-allamericans-2016

After watching Trinity for better than 10-years, I generally try not to get excited about the prospects of a "2-game series." For me it is has been easier to say "its kids playing baseball" and let it go at that.

However, when you look at the pitching that they have available, you have to get a little "excited."

Troy Nelson  (era 3.28, 63 K's in 46 innings)
Chris Tate (era 1.41, 47 K's in 32 innings)
Kevin Flores (era 0.00, 13 k's in 8 innings)
Plus 5-other pitchers that have yet to pitch at the regional with ERA's of less than 1.50.

I can not remember any team going into the finals with as much fresh, good pitchers available. Tim has done a great job of building a very deep team that is well prepared for tournament ball.

D3 is a hybrid system at best. Every year readers raise the same questions; mostly because they don't understand a system which for many doesn't make sense.

What we have is:

Regional Rankings (which ultimately mean nothing)
Pool C - National Rankings based upon Regional results.
Pool B – National Ranking based upon Regional results.

All of this which is built on SOS which is a National formula, that does not take into consideration the mathematical differences which result from either the "isolation" of the west or the "concentration" in the east.

Then you overlay it all with the "political" strength which results from the concentration of teams in the eastern portion of the country.

The result is you get a hybrid system for picking teams to play for a national championship. It took me 10-years to truly understand how it is likely to work (you never know because those that make the selections do it behind "closed" doors).

OK; I am confused. Tyler tournament website says all games have been moved to Friday. D3Baseball indicates Trinity/Millsaps will be played at 11pmEDT tonight. Accuweather indicated that it stopped raining at about 8:30CDT.

Does anyone know what the schedule is?

It doesn't look like they will get started soon. Check out the radar picture:

http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/tyler-tx/75702/weather-radar/331126

They may be done for today. If so; could they call the current game after 5 innings?

Bishop:

I went to several AZ Fall games. Klimesh is being used exclusively in short relief.  Except for the AZ Fall All-star game he was used principally as a closer. I spoke with Ben during his stay in AZ and he didn't expect (he didn't know yet) to be invited to the MLB camp. He is very happy with his role and his progress.

It was interesting to see the changes that the Reds have made to his pitching motion; it is much more deceptive then when he was in college. His velocity was 92-94 with his splitter (at 88-91) being his out pitch.

It is interesting to note the number of schools participating in the 2014 regionals that made up the SCAC not too long ago. You don't have to go back to far to see all of these as part of the SCAC.

Rose-Hulman
DePauw
Rhodes
Birmingham-Southern
Trinity

Crash; it is not just losses, it is just playing sub-.500 teams. More than half of the SCIAC had a sub .500 record. This mathematically discounts the SOS for the top teams. This is true in the ASC and SCAC which is made worse by the fact that most of each conferences non-conference games are ASC/SCAC gamed which compounds the problem.

Spence - if it didn't happen this year it is in the "past tense." Rule changes which eliminate the ability to play early season games which don't count against your regional record and "a game is a game" will likely eliminate trips which are anything other than both competitive and cost effective.

You shouldn't make blanket statements which don't recognize that the methodology has change and that prior actions may not occur under the current operating parameters.

It is much easier (and cheaper) to manage your SOS with a 2-hour bus ride versus a $30,000 trip to play a couple of games.

I have watched enough D3 games to know that there is not that much difference between good teams no matter where they are. For one conference to get 4 teams and another conference to get 3 shows that the system is flawed when a region that covers half of the country gets only 4 teams.

Much was made about regional rankings. The reality is they are meaningless when selections are made on a national basis.

It is nice that west teams are getting out and traveling to other west areas for play. But it does nothing to increase SOS. Each of the four western conferences play 75% +/- games in their respective conferences. Because each conference is isolated; there is little or no chance to enhance SOS without a making an effort to play teams which by their nature have stronger SOS.

For years Chapman as an independent could "manage" their SOS. If you don't play weak teams you can "enhance" your SOS.

If you are in a conference where half or more teams have sub .500 W/L records you are starting with a weak SOS. Then if you are need to either travel 6-8 hours for a mid-weak game, just to get a game in, you have little or no chance at generating a strong SOS.

In the past it seamed as that the committee gave "credit" to the west for their weak SOS. This year when you get 4 teams from one conference and 3 from another; that "credit" is gone. The system is broken; if selection is on a national basis with the impact of a national SOS playing such an important roll, let's skip the charade of "regional rankings", publish a real national ranking based upon selection criteria.