The Baseball Observer - Jan/ Feb 2016
NCAA DIII TEAMS TO WATCH
The defending NCAA Div. III
champion SUNY Cortland
baseball team enters the 2016 season ranked first nationally in Division III by both Collegiate Baseball Newspaper and by the web site D3baseball.com.
The Red Dragons, under 17th-year head coach Joe Brown, won their first national title last spring. Cortland finished the season with a school-best 45-4 record, including a 5-0 mark at the NCAA Div. III World Series. Cortland won three games in pool play at the Series before sweeping Wisconsin-La Crosse, 11-3 and 6-2, in the championship round.
Cortland has made 13 World Series appearances, all since 1995. Cortland's current run of 23 NCAA tournament appearances is the longest active streak in Div. III and the fourth longest in any division behind Div. I schools Miami (43), Florida State (38) and Cal St.-Fullerton (24). The Red Dragons also won their 33rd State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) title last spring and 10th in the last 11 years.
Cortland is scheduled to play 14 games this spring against teams currently in the Collegiate Baseball top 40. The Red Dragons open the season with two games at fourth-ranked Salibury Feb. 20-21. Cortland will face 13th-ranked Marietta and 17th-ranked Methodist as part of Methodist's tournament in North Carolina Feb. 26 and will play a pair of contests at 24th-ranked Johns Hopkins March 5-6.
After back-to-back NCAA South Regional Championships and trips to the College World Series in 2014 and 2015, the Emory University Baseball program will look to make it a three-peat when the 2016 season kicks off this weekend.
Emory, which enters the season ranked third in the country in both the Collegiate Baseball News and D3Baseball.com Preseason Polls, finished the 2015 campaign with an overall record of 31-15 and claimed a share of the University Athletic Association Championship with a 6-2 conference record. It was the team's fourth in the last five seasons and a UAA-leading 13th title overall. The Eagles will return 25 players from last year's squad including 10 position players that appeared in at least 20 games and six pitchers that either appeared in 10 or more contests or made at least five starts on the mound.
Headlining the pitching staff is junior southpaw and D3Baseball.com and HERO Sports Preseason All-America First Team selection Jackson Weeg. Weeg is coming off a stellar sophomore season where he led the nation with 12 victories, going 12-1 on the year to go along with a 2.59 ERA and racking up 98 strikeouts in 100.2 innings pitched. Joining Weeg in the rotation will be fellow juniors Hans Hansen and Luke Emmett, senior Paul Merolla and newcomer Billy Dimlow.
The Eagles appear to be solid again in the infield with all four starters returning. Junior Philip Maldari is back to man the hot corner and is coming off a tremendous sophomore season in which he garnered ACBA/Rawlings and D3Baseball.com All-South Region Second Team honors and was named First Team All-UAA.
NCAA DIII TEAMS TO WATCH
SUNY
CORTLAND
#1
Courtesy of cortlandreddragons.com
#3
EMORY
Courtesy of emoryathletics.com
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