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College  | Story  | 2/23/2017

Weekend Preview: Week 2

Patrick Ebert      Mike Rooney      Jheremy Brown     
Photo: Courtney Culbreath




Perfect Game Top 25 | PG/Rawlings Player/Pitcher of the Week | PG College Player Database | Database Spotlight

The second weekend of the 2017 college baseball season is a little more quiet in regards to nationally ranked opponents, although Miami visiting No. 3 Florida in Gainesville is a series to watch each and every year and will certainly be played in front of a large, loud and raucous crowd at McKethan Stadium. While Miami holds the all-time series lead (128-117-1), the Gators have narrowed that gap with Kevin O'Sullivan as the Head Coach, who holds a 24-11 record against Jim Morris and the Hurricanes. More details on this series are available below.

The only series pitting Top 25-ranked opponents against one another will occur in Baton Rouge, La., as second-ranked LSU hosts No. 25 Maryland. Maryland is at risk of falling out of the rankings after opening the year with a 1-2 record in Clearwater, Fla., while the Tigers beat Army (twice) and Air Force by a combined score of 25-3, which included senior lefthander Jared Poche's no-hitter on Saturday.

Wright State will look to continue to be a pest in the state of South Carolina as they visit the fifth-ranked Gamecocks after winning their opening-season series against Clemson, ASU will have their hands full with No. 1 TCU in Fort Worth and Sam Houston State will look to continue to make their case for Top 25 inclusion as they host No. 13 Louisiana.

LakePoint will once again be in action as part of Perfect Game's Spring Swing with several Division I (and junior college programs) taking the fields, as Canisius, Chicago State, IPFW, NJIT, Ohio and SIU Edwardsville all travel to Emerson, Ga. Follow all of the action in the Scout Notes from PG Park at LakePoint blog.

Stay tuned to Perfect Game throughout the weekend as Mike Rooney will provide observations on No. 7 Oregon State among others from the Big Ten/Pac-12 Spring Training College Baseball Challenge in Surprise, Ariz.


Top 25 in Action
Rk. Team Opponent Location
1 Texas Christian home vs. Arizona State Fort Worth, TX
2 Louisiana State home vs. Maryland Baton Rouge, LA
3 Florida home vs. Miami Gainesville, FL
4 Florida State home vs. Samford Tallahassee, FL
5 South Carolina home vs. Wright State Columbia, SC
6 Louisville home vs. Nebraska-Omaha Louisville, KY
7 Oregon State at Big Ten/Pac-12 Challenge Surprise, AZ
8 Ole Miss home vs. UNC Wilmington Oxford, MS
9 Vanderbilt home vs. Illinois-Chicago Nashville, TN
10 North Carolina home vs. Radford Chapel Hill, NC
11 Oklahoma State home vs. Texas State Stillwater, OK
12 Cal State Fullerton at UNLV Las Vegas, NV
13 Louisiana at Sam Houston State Huntsville, TX
14 NC State home vs. Austin Peay Raleigh, NC
15 East Carolina home vs. La Salle Greenville, NC
16 Texas home vs. UConn Austin, TX
17 Washington at Saint Mary's Moraga, CA
18 Stanford home vs. Kansas Stanford, CA
19 Houston at Kleberg Bank Classic Corpus Christi, TX
20 Clemson home vs. Elon Clemson, SC
21 Rice home vs. Southeastern Louisiana Houston, TX
22 Arizona home vs. McNeese State Tucson, AZ
23 Texas A&M home vs. Pepperdine College Station, TX
24 Virginia home vs. Rutgers Charlottesville, VA
25 Maryland at No. 2 Louisiana State Baton Rouge, LA


Gators, Hurricanes clash in Gainesville

When the third-ranked Gators take the field on Friday against in-state rival Miami it will make the 247th time the two teams have played one another. Miami holds a 128-117-1 all-time series lead, but that gap has been significantly closed by Florida under the watch of Head Coach Kevin O’Sullivan, who is 24-11 against the Hurricanes and has claimed 23 of the last 29 meetings, winning six of the last seven regular season series, including the last two in 2015 and 2016.

The Gators also ended Miami’s season, in Omaha at the College World Series, in 2015 with a pair of big victories over the Hurricanes. Florida also ended Miami’s season in 2009 (Gainesville Regional), 2010 (Gainesville Super Regional) and 2011 (Gainesville Regional).

Prior to that Miami ended Florida’s season eight different times, in 1981, 1985, 1989, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2003 and 2004. During that time the Hurricanes won the College World Series four times (1982, 1985, 1999 and 2001), something the Gators have yet to accomplish, although they have reached the College World Series five times in the last seven years.

It's safe to say this isn't the most friendly of rivalries.

While O’Sullivan has entered his 10th year at the helm of the Florida program Miami Heach Coach Jim Morris in on year 24 with the Hurricanes. Miami has qualified for the NCAA Tournament a record 44 years in a row and Morris has taken his team to Omaha 13 times in his 23 years, including appearances in both 2015 and 2016. He now has 1,537 wins at the Division I level after opening the 2017 season 2-1.

Morris is now seventh all-time in head coaching wins at the Division I level and the only active coaches with more wins than him are Florida State’s Mike Martin (1,900) and Stanford’s Mark Marquess (1,586).

A series win for unranked Miami over the third-ranked Gators, in Gainesville, will be considered an upset for certain, and may be enough for the Hurricanes to crack into Perfect Game’s Top 25 after opening the season ranked 30th. They will face arguably the most dynamic starting staff in all of college baseball in Alex Faedo, Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar, all three of whom could be taken among the top 3-5 overall picks in either this year’s draft (Faedo) or next year’s (Singer and Kowar).

While Faedo gave up four earned runs in 4 2/3 innings last Friday he did strike out seven William & Mary hitters, and the Gators earned the win. Singer and Kowar proved to be much more stingy on Saturday and Sunday respectively, giving up only one earned run each in five and 5 2/3 innings, with Kowar in particular standing out, finishing his day with 10 punchouts.

Miami will counter with three proven starters of their own in Jesse Lepore – who allowed just two hits and struck out seven in six shutout frames over Rutgers to open the season – Jeb Bargfeldt and Michael Mediavilla. Like Faedo, Mediavilla didn’t fare well in his first start of 2017 and lasted just 3 1/3 innings as Miami lost to Rutgers 17-6 in Coral Gables, but the Hurricanes still claimed the series 2-1.

– Patrick Ebert


King James retains his throne

Rhode Island might be the smallest of all 50 states with a total of 1,045 square miles but nestled alongside the Atlantic Ocean is one of the most dominant pitchers in all of college baseball: Bryant righthander James Karinchak. The Northeast Conference’s reigning Pitcher of the Year, Karinchak entered the 2017 season with high expectations both in terms of draft potential and also in a leadership role to help guide a rather young Bulldog team. It’s safe to say expectations were met, and possibly exceed, in his opening day five-inning start at New Mexico State.

The strongly built 6-foot-3, 220-pound New York native, who has added noticeable muscle mass in the last calendar year, entered last Friday with a 20-8 career mark and was able to add another tally to the win column in exciting fashion. Out of a possible 15 outs Karinchak managed to strike out 12 (good for a 21.60 K-per-9 ratio) while walking just one, giving him 198 strikeouts over 177 1/3 innings with just 77 free passes during his college career. He made noise last spring at the Tony Gwynn Classic with an outstanding performance over San Diego State and he looks to do the same this upcoming weekend as he and his Bryant teammates travel to Fayetteville to take on SEC foe Arkansas.



One of top prospects in all New England this spring, joined by fellow Rhode Islander Tyler Wilson and Boston College outfielder Donovan Casey, reports surfaced over the fall of how Karinchak was putting up big velocity which would only add to his dominance. The uptick in velocity proved to be true as did the notion of added dominance as Karinchak came out of the gates hot, sitting 93-95 mph with his heater, touching as high as 98 mph on some guns before settling comfortably in the 89-92 mph band from innings 2-5. At its best his curveball is a true downer in the low-80s and has proven to be a swing-and-miss pitch both in the past and during opening weekend.

A perennial power in the Northeast Conference over the last handful of seasons Bryant and Karinchak look to stay atop the conference standings once NEC play opens on March 17 at Fairleigh Dickinson. Until then the durable righthander looks to build upon his strikeout total, one that currently ranks fifth best in the country.

To view Steve Fiorindo's full report on Karinchak from last Friday's performance please visit this link.

– Jheremy Brown


A Tribute to Eleven

Mike Martin of Florida State earned his 1900th win this past weekend and this is an accomplishment so enormous that it needs perspective.  So let’s do that.

Martin has a winning percentage of .738, which leads all active Division I Baseball coaches. Martin has also been the head coach at a Power 5 program for 38 consecutive seasons. Take a moment to think about trying to replicate that in today’s environment in college athletics.

Over those 37 seasons, Martin has averaged 51.2 wins per year. That is a large number that gets even more gargantuan when you consider that you are only allowed to schedule 56 regular season games per year.

By almost any standard, 40-plus wins and an NCAA Tournament berth is an outstanding college baseball season. Mike Martin is 37 for 37 in this category. In fact, Martin’s worst year at Florida State meets that “outstanding season” standard. So that means that the Seminoles have literally never had a bad season under Martin’s leadership.

The only college baseball coach with more wins than Mike Martin is the recently retired Augie Garrido with 1,975 wins. Martin is on pace to break that record in the second half of the 2018 season.

It is my opinion that this mark will, similar Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, become a baseball record never to be broken. If you are skeptical, let’s break it down:

Brian O’Connor is on a Hall of Fame pace as a college baseball head coach. He has averaged just under 46 wins per year over his 13 seasons at Virginia. O’Connor just earned his 600th win this week. So Brian O’Connor would need to keep that 46-win pace for the next 41 years in order to get to 1,900 wins. He would be 88 years old when that happened.

Here’s the other challenge: Mike Martin isn’t stopping at 1,900.

– Mike Rooney

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