BB: IIAC: Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Congrats to Luther catcher and IIAC MVP Kyle Schroeder on signing an independent minor league contract.

http://sports.luther.edu/men/baseball/season%20-%202008/news/schroeder.html

[Ralph Turner]

The change in subject heading is to facilitate identifying a specific message board by sport and then by subject.  Good luck in 2008.

[footballdaddy]

Any predictions of how the upcoming season will go? Will the Kinghts string be broken?

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Luther (31-11 overall, tied for the regular season IIAC title, IIAC tourney champs) lost Schroeder (C) and Peterson (OF) to graduation, and they were anchors in the middle of a very good offensive lineup last year.  They were the two seniors among the six all-IIAC performers for the Norse last year.

They do return almost everyone else though, and that was a deep lineup for much of the year.

The Norse pitching staff returns and should be pretty deep if everyone is healthy.  Kohls and Todd should be very good again.

Wartburg will be good again, but I haven't read anything on them as of yet.  Aaron Saeugling (P) is back for them, and he impressed me last season.  If I remember correctly, the Knights lost more to graduation than the Norse.

Each year is a new season though.  Good luck to everyone, as I will start to get into baseball after the wrestling championships are done.

[youcantseemestill]

The season is underway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Finally!  Man I love baseball season.

Warts struggling early up in the dome.  I don't recognize A LOT of their players.  Man, Schmitt pitched a helluva game against the Ole's.  Is anyone out there looking at this board yet?

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Wow!  I didn't even know that Wartburg had started playing until I saw the paper this past weekend.  Nothing too horrible about splitting with St. Olaf to start the season.  It looked like Aaron Saeugling and Schmitt both pitched well against the Oles.

Saeugling also appears to be a main part of the Wartburg offense this year as well. 

I would love to hear about what happened against Bethel as those scores did not appear close.  Bethel is a solid program and the Knights had thrown the top two pitchers against the Oles, but that is not the way the Knights wanted to start the year.

Things can change pretty quickly though and Wartburg has a great track record this past decade. 

Congrats to Iowa Baseball for beating #7 Vanderbilt and Xavier so far this weekend!  Hopefully they can play well against Kansas today to give them some good early momentum.

#16 Luther opens up in the Dome next Saturday.  Pitching depth and keeping players healthy will be my main focus to start this year.  Maybe I can see the Norse early in the morning before heading to the Big Ten Wrestling tourney at the Barn.

[SLP-O-8]

BV will be a young and very underrated team this year.  They are very talented and could surprise some people.  The team is made up of 25 freshman, 8 sophomores, 5 Juniors and 4 Seniors.

[youcantseemestill]

Is it bad that BV is getting as many baseball freshmen as football freshmen?

[baseballfan186]

The IIAC race will most likely be determined by which team has the most pitching depth. To win the conference a team is going to need 4-5 quality pitchers. A number of teams have a couple interchangable #1's (Wartburg, Luther, Coe, Central). Depthwise, I've got to believe Wartburg, Luther, and Central will have the capability of running out 5-6 guys that can hold teams in check.

It sounds like BV has a couple of good arms this year. Cornell could be a surprise with the solid veterans on their staff. Loras has Barilla, not sure what they will have after him. Dubuque looks to be struggling early on, but Boals is definitely capable of holding teams down. Unsure of what Simpson's staff will shape up to look like. Coe has some good ones in Nicholsen, Lewis, and Boyse.

[SLP-O-8]

BV has some very good arms but young arms.  Lot of freshman potential on the mound and in the field and could start around 6 freshman this year.  They will probably take some bumps in the road but will also suprise people.  Watch out for OF Brandon Pietrzyk, he will make some noise this year.  He is a transfer junior from an oregon school and is very good.

[youcantseemestill]

The IIAC race will most likely be determined by which team has the most pitching depth. To win the conference a team is going to need 4-5 quality pitchers. A number of teams have a couple interchangable #1's (Wartburg, Luther, Coe, Central). Depthwise, I've got to believe Wartburg, Luther, and Central will have the capability of running out 5-6 guys that can hold teams in check.

It sounds like BV has a couple of good arms this year. Cornell could be a surprise with the solid veterans on their staff. Loras has Barilla, not sure what they will have after him. Dubuque looks to be struggling early on, but Boals is definitely capable of holding teams down. Unsure of what Simpson's staff will shape up to look like. Coe has some good ones in Nicholsen, Lewis, and Boyse.

Coe also has welcomed the return of Teren Bladel who was out with a broken wrist last season.  In his first start in Florida he went 6.1 innings of hitless ball.  Lost the no-no on a solo jack.

[SLP-O-8]

BV is 3-1 on the year losing their first one to Midland Lutheran and won their last 3 against them over sunday and tuesday in Omaha.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Congrats to Coe for getting off to a pretty solid start at 8-4.  They took some lumps last season but overall they have been pretty solid the past five years.

I don't know about B.V.'s opponents, but congrats to the Beavers as well for going 4-1 so far with that young roster.  Luther is supposed to play B.V. this weekend in Decorah.

It is early, but I have been surprised at the pitching depth (or lack of it) so far from Loras and Wartburg.  The Knights are now 6-9 and Schmitt was knocked around recently.

#16 Luther is 0-1 after losing to #10 UW-Oshkosh 7-5 in extra innings.  In the game 2 that never officially took place (in the Metrodome with the time limit stuff), Luther was leading Oshkosh 9-5 after six innings.  The Norse play a very solid Gustavus Adolphus squad on Wednesday.

[SLP-O-8]

BV will find out a lot from this week.  Wednesday or tonight they play St Scholastic in the Meterdome.  They have been receiving votes all year long for the Top 25 and obviously as stated before a very good Luther team.  BV is 4-1 and was up 8-1 in the 4th inning last weekend against Peru State in the second part of the DH but the game was canceled so now of it has happened. 

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Congrats to Simpson, Central, Coe, and Dubuque for actually being able to play conference baseball games this weekend!

From a Luther perspective, it has been a slow start to the season so far.  They could not make a spring trip because the B.V. series and Easter fell during spring break this year (spring break seems to be later and later every year on the Decorah campus), so they have been trying to get Metrodome doubleheaders in instead.  The weather (B.V. series) obviously has not helped this year so far.

The Norse play three doubleheaders in the Dome starting tonight through Wednesday against Minnesota schools.  They split with Gustavus last Wednesday (saving the top 3 pitchers for the B.V. series that never happened), losing game one 2-1 while winning game two 6-0.  Both teams had more chances to score in game one and did not get it done while Luther hit more consistent in game two and pitched a no-hitter with the #6(?) starter.  Gustavus has been a pretty solid MIAC program the past few years, so I was pretty happy overall with how solid Luther looked even when pitchers #1-3 did not play.  They are now 1-2 on the year and have a game that did not count (9-5 lead on #10 Oshkosh after 6 innings).

I assume Kohls and Todd (the top two pitchers) will throw either today or tomorrow up in the Dome to get more work in before the Wartburg series this weekend.  Both of them have only pitched once this year, and that was back on March 8.

The Norse looked pretty good defensively against Gustavus as C Waddle was good behind the plate and 2B, SS, and 3B looked pretty good in game two.  There was a freshman 3B in game two that looked very smooth.  The outfield looked good for this early in the year as well.