BB: USAC: USA South Athletic Conference

[OshDude]

Not out to argue and nit-pick...I simply make rational comments and statements then back up my viewpoint with facts, which is something that I commend to the few people on here that actually do that. For years I've read this board (I think it was created my junior year at CNU...not positive though) and couldn't believe some of the empty discussions and/or arguments that have occured. When I post something on such a board as this (which is a free, public forum) I understand that all people will read it. Some could care less, some will have a negative reaction, some will have a positive reaction...and I welcome all. I feel that's the point of a message board...to express and discuss facts and feelings about whatever topic said board is about. This one happens to be about USA South baseball, and that includes everything...not just patting everybody on the butt for a job well done.

I expect various viewpoints of mine to be challenged, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Before I type anything in a public forum I make sure of two things: 1) that my spelling and grammar is correct (I don't want to come across sounding like an idiot), and 2) before I make a statement I make darn sure that I have reasonable and accurate information to back it up. It doesn't take days, hours, or even minutes to do that...it requires a solid knowledge of the game and familiarity with the conference. I hold other posts I read to the same standard and if I see something I don't agree with I question it. I don't consider that nit-picking...I consider it being an active and contributing member of a message board.

But if you and that other USA Fan (especially that guy) are going to continue to hype a team up for no reason, then you probably should disregard me. That would be a very wise move...

Can you back up this assertion from a previous post? "... (the USA South is) the best D-III conference in the nation."

"Best" as in "my favorite" or "the best overall conference" or "the best baseball conference"? I disagree if it's either of the latter two.

[boysofsummer]

As stated in the Massey Ratings.

http://www.masseyratings.com/rate.php?lg=cbase#conf

[D-BAT]

CNU Fan: Yes, I was talking about you...not trying to ruffle any feathers though. I was essentially saying to you and your other Averett-loving pal that I don't plan on jumping on the bandwagon anytime soon. If my posts towards Averett annoy you I would suggest you disregard them as well much like the other guy is. I am sorry though...I should have made that more clear.

"cnuball25", OK, but your perception on me is way off-base.  I am very neutral with all, look at my alias.

I've picked Methodist to win the regular season as I have only recognized that Averett is off to a RED hot start.

What's wrong with acknowledging that someone is off to a fast start?  It seems very similar to what Shenandoah did last year as everyone stated that were playing "cupcakes" but Shenandoah University won the Mid-Atlantic Regional and went onto the World Series, did they not?

I support all of the USA-South baseball and I am sorry that I have not posted about CNU yet.

[cnuball25]

Boysofsummer: Sorry, I honestly don't try to come across as a snob...I do like to include humorous/sarcastic comments in my posts however. If those come across as being mean or snobby that honestly isn't the intent...but as an outsider I always enjoyed reading posts a little more if there is humor involved and I assume a lot of people are the same.

Oshdude: If you'll read some of my previous posts (which it appears you have), you'll realize that I'm very careful what I type on here. The reason I say that is because it would be incredibly ignorant of me to get on here and proclaim the USA South as the best DIII conference in the nation. I've played at two different schools at 2 different levels and consider myself very knowledgeable when it comes to schools at all levels in the south...but I'd be lying if I said I know a darn thing about the majority of teams outside that particular region. Fortunately for me, I didn't have too...The Massey Ratings did it for us. If you're not familiar with this, the Massey Ratings is one of the computer systems that do the BCS rankings (obviously your opinion of the BCS will depend on whether that adds or subtracts credibility to these rankings). Go to the link provided above, scroll to the top of the page and click on "group III". Then scroll down 3/4 the way to the bottom and there you will find these computer generated conference rankings. You can agree or disagree...but when a very prominent ranking system labels a conference as such, that does carry some weight.

USA Fan: You perception is such because you seem to be the only one on here hyping them up. Usasouthisnumber1 has backed you and has attempted to convince everyone that the 11-2 record is legitimate, but besides you two I'm not sure anyone is buying it yet. Regardless, you've typed so much about them recently that is has led me to believe (along with a couple other players from other schools that message me on occasion) that you are indeed an Averett die-hard...which is absolutely 100% fine. If you are in fact neutral that's fine as well, but your posts (at least all that majority that I've seen) don't necessarily read that way. I apologize as I somehow missed your posts regarding Averett and the history behind their pitching staff injuries. And you're also correct regarding Shenandoah...but that had more to do with a team getting unbelievably hot at the perfect time more so than schedule strength. By now I've exhausted the SOS comments and won't be bringing it up anymore unless someone else starts it up again. And no need to appologize for not posting about CNU...enough people bring us up as is

Good night to all...I have spent WAY to much darn time on here today. I do look forward to seeing how CNU responds this week to playing against Salisbury and Va Wesleyan...any other interesting weekday matchups to watch for??

[randomguy]

ok, people know who i am and thats not going to bother me at all... i did what i did in order to play as much ball as possible, but i see all this talk about averett and some of it is true and some of it it well deserved.  i work an hourly job in order to take care of myself but i have been around the team alot and i understand what is going on.... a few of the guys that have been around a few years are hitting the ball really well and the newly found pitchers and surprising even me right now... there is still time to tell whether the pitchers will hold up... but i feel like the offense here will surprise alot of people... given greensboro made  some errors averett still hit the crap out of the ball..... and yes i played at averett and im not going to go out of my way to pick them to win it all or anything but they are playing at a level above what i expected from them, and i wish i had some of this last year haha, would have helped me a bit!

[D-BAT]

Monday's results:

Lebanon Valley (2) Ferrum (4)
        
NCW (3) John Carroll (4)

[OshDude]

Boysofsummer: Sorry, I honestly don't try to come across as a snob...I do like to include humorous/sarcastic comments in my posts however. If those come across as being mean or snobby that honestly isn't the intent...but as an outsider I always enjoyed reading posts a little more if there is humor involved and I assume a lot of people are the same.

Oshdude: If you'll read some of my previous posts (which it appears you have), you'll realize that I'm very careful what I type on here. The reason I say that is because it would be incredibly ignorant of me to get on here and proclaim the USA South as the best DIII conference in the nation. I've played at two different schools at 2 different levels and consider myself very knowledgeable when it comes to schools at all levels in the south...but I'd be lying if I said I know a darn thing about the majority of teams outside that particular region. Fortunately for me, I didn't have too...The Massey Ratings did it for us. If you're not familiar with this, the Massey Ratings is one of the computer systems that do the BCS rankings (obviously your opinion of the BCS will depend on whether that adds or subtracts credibility to these rankings). Go to the link provided above, scroll to the top of the page and click on "group III". Then scroll down 3/4 the way to the bottom and there you will find these computer generated conference rankings. You can agree or disagree...but when a very prominent ranking system labels a conference as such, that does carry some weight.

USA Fan: You perception is such because you seem to be the only one on here hyping them up. Usasouthisnumber1 has backed you and has attempted to convince everyone that the 11-2 record is legitimate, but besides you two I'm not sure anyone is buying it yet. Regardless, you've typed so much about them recently that is has led me to believe (along with a couple other players from other schools that message me on occasion) that you are indeed an Averett die-hard...which is absolutely 100% fine. If you are in fact neutral that's fine as well, but your posts (at least all that majority that I've seen) don't necessarily read that way. I apologize as I somehow missed your posts regarding Averett and the history behind their pitching staff injuries. And you're also correct regarding Shenandoah...but that had more to do with a team getting unbelievably hot at the perfect time more so than schedule strength. By now I've exhausted the SOS comments and won't be bringing it up anymore unless someone else starts it up again. And no need to appologize for not posting about CNU...enough people bring us up as is

Good night to all...I have spent WAY to much darn time on here today. I do look forward to seeing how CNU responds this week to playing against Salisbury and Va Wesleyan...any other interesting weekday matchups to watch for??

The same rankings that show the GSAC as the No. 3 conference, right? That's one way of looking at things, I guess. With all of those columns of numbers, who am I to disagree?

[cnuball25]

Yup...you're right. I have to be completely honest though...I've never been a big fan of computer-generated anything. The only reason I even REMOTELY like the Massey computer is because a couple years ago in college football (when LSU won the championship), VT got held out of the national title game because the majority of the computers had us lower (well, I guess that and the fact that LSU absolutely SMOKED us by 30-some on the road). The Massey Rankings had VT at #1 however, so my opinion for liking that computer is completely biased and I'm not afraid to admit that!

There are flaws in every humun-based rating/ranking system, which is the reason these computer-generated "things" were designed in the first place. But the computers certainly have flaws and only add more confusion to the whole process in my opinion.

[boysofsummer]

ANyone going to the CNU vs VWC game today?

[narch]

The same rankings that show the GSAC as the No. 3 conference, right? That's one way of looking at things, I guess. With all of those columns of numbers, who am I to disagree?

gsac aside, i think the massey ratings look pretty solid - i'm willing to write that gsac computer glitch off to such a small sample size with only 4 teams in the "conference"...having a 20-21 piedmont team as the worst in the conference probably skews the equation a bit...

i'm not sure i would necessarily peg the usasac the best in the country, but certainly one of the top 5 conferences in the country isn't a stretch in any given year, and given the fact that the 4th best usasac team finished in the top 6 in the country last year...maybe the usasac WAS the best conference in the nation last season - of the top 15 massey listed conferences, the usasac and wiac had the highest ooc win% at .627 and .622, respectively (the OAC was the only other conference above .600, with a .607 ooc win%) -  since almost every usasac played multiple games vs. the gsac (who ranked 9th among this group in ooc win% at .539, despite playing many games against usasac foes), i could see where the skewing of the gsac ranking might be the difference between the wiac and the usasac, but it is hard to argue that the usasac wasn't one of the top 2 conferences last year...given the fact that the usasac had a w-s participant, and the wiac didn't and the fact that the usasac had 3 regional teams vs. 2 for the wiac, a strong case could be made for the usasac over the wiac in 2009

whatcha got for me oshdude?

[D-BAT]

VWC (9) CNU (11)

CNU pushed across six runs in the bottom of the eighth inning and went on to an 11-9 win over Virginia Wesleyan Tuesday at Captains Park.

Down, 9-5, Drue Vernon singled home Shayne Kersey and Stephen Keener drew a bases loaded walk to cut the deficit to two. Parker Neal's double drove in two to tie the score and then Mike Romett drove in a pair with a single to give CNU the lead.

[D-BAT]

Ferrum gets DH sweep over Marywood University from Scranton, PA by the scores of 8 to 3 and 6 to 2.


Conf/Overall
2-0  11-2 ... AU
2-0  05-4 ... NCW
1-1  07-3 ... CNU  
1-1  07-4 ... MU
0-0  06-1 ... FC
0-2  03-3 ... SU
0-2  03-6 ... GB


The USA-South is 42-23 overall, not a bad start on the young season!

[OshDude]

The same rankings that show the GSAC as the No. 3 conference, right? That's one way of looking at things, I guess. With all of those columns of numbers, who am I to disagree?

gsac aside, i think the massey ratings look pretty solid - i'm willing to write that gsac computer glitch off to such a small sample size with only 4 teams in the "conference"...having a 20-21 piedmont team as the worst in the conference probably skews the equation a bit...

i'm not sure i would necessarily peg the usasac the best in the country, but certainly one of the top 5 conferences in the country isn't a stretch in any given year, and given the fact that the 4th best usasac team finished in the top 6 in the country last year...maybe the usasac WAS the best conference in the nation last season - of the top 15 massey listed conferences, the usasac and wiac had the highest ooc win% at .627 and .622, respectively (the OAC was the only other conference above .600, with a .607 ooc win%) -  since almost every usasac played multiple games vs. the gsac (who ranked 9th among this group in ooc win% at .539, despite playing many games against usasac foes), i could see where the skewing of the gsac ranking might be the difference between the wiac and the usasac, but it is hard to argue that the usasac wasn't one of the top 2 conferences last year...given the fact that the usasac had a w-s participant, and the wiac didn't and the fact that the usasac had 3 regional teams vs. 2 for the wiac, a strong case could be made for the usasac over the wiac in 2009

whatcha got for me oshdude?

First, the numbers on that site are not 100 percent accurate. Second, I don't think the WIAC is No. 1, but I would put it in the top two or three (well, maybe No. 1 in some years). Third, I do think the USA South is top five or so. Fourth, the criteria used to determine the rankings are very different than how the NCAA views teams and conferences at the D-III level.

I'm off to work right now, but if you want I'll post what I think are the top seven or eight conferences some other time. It defintely includes the OAC, LEC, WIAC and USA South. I'd have to think about it some more. I had a knee-jerk response to the USA South being touted the best D-III baseball conference. While very good, I just don't think it is.

[Catfishncwc]

What happen to Van Sickler being that shutdown pitcher.  I was away for the weekend but didn't someone say that SU was going to take Game 1 because Van Sickler was a shutdown pitcher.  Good job Bishops looks like Knowles pitched a great game. 

[hokieone]

           Salisbury at CNU for Thursday is canceled. The field was tarped after yesterday's  game, but Tidewater is having a nor'easter, with snow. The games at Ferrum will be Sunday and Monday, but the weather forecast says 58 Sunday and 63   on Monday. real baseball weather perhaps at last!  


         Kudos to Nick Boothe for "Best performance By A Manager Trying To get Ejected To Fire Up His team In The Ninth" yesterday. VWC didn't care for a couple calls on the bases, nor the strike zone, although objectively it seemed to be the same zone for both squads all day, so with his team down 11-9 in the top of the 9th, he dropped the magic word and got a trip out the gate. It was cold as the dickens anyway so maybe he wanted to get warm.  He did gets his troops pumped, as well as a few VWC fans that were pretty verbose all afternoon anyway and needed no help, but a leadoff double was squandered.

     Hopefully Bridgewater and Shenandoah can  play today.  BC's players were shoveling snow earlier in the week trying to get ready.   Has it ever been this stinking cold and damp 1 week before daylight savings time kicks in?