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General  | General | 1/30/2009

Lewis-Clark Favored in NAIA Again

Allan Simpson
The greatest dynasty in college sports? Look no further than the baseball team at Idaho’s Lewis-Clark State.

Since winning their first NAIA World Series title 25 years ago, the Warriors have won 16 championships altogether, including the last three. With several key players returning from a team that went 58-7 in 2008, L-C State is heavily favored to make it four in a row this season. And that wouldn’t even be a team record as the Warriors won six straight NAIA World Series crowns from 1987-92.

Ed Cheff, who became Lewis-Clark State’s head coach in 1977, has gone 1,627-410 in 32 years and is the fourth-winningest coach in college baseball annals, is the mastermind behind his team’s stunning success. His formula for making it work has rarely changed through the years, and it generally stems from his ability to mix and match players with varied backgrounds and talent into a cohesive unit, while adding a serious dose of home cooking.

L-C State served as the host site for the NAIA World Series from 1984-91 and has done so continuously since 2000. The 10-team tournament, scheduled this year for May 22-29, is contractually committed to the school’s campus in Lewiston, Idaho, through 2012. Coincidentally, the Warriors have won 13 of their 16 national titles on their home field.

Typical of a Lewis-Clark State team, this year’s roster has players from eight different states, plus Canada and Puerto Rico. There are 14 players from California, 11 from Washington. With few exceptions, every Warriors player is either a junior-college or four-year college transfer. Several of the players who will make an impact this year were just looking for a second (or third) chance to play baseball at the college level when they chose to enroll at L-C State; others didn’t have the grades to attend Division I schools or were even released from D-I scholarships and had nowhere else to turn.

The somewhat renegade nature of baseball at the NAIA level plays right into the hands of a team like the Warriors. Typically, NAIA schools are not encumbered by the increasingly strict rules and regulations that govern NCAA Division I baseball, such as uniform starting dates, strict scheduling, transfer rules, academic standards and roster sizes—and Cheff has exploited the rules to his advantage, while incorporating a little of his own coaching wizardry.

While players can no longer transfer from one D-I school to another without sitting out a year, no such rule applies to NAIA schools and several D-I players have found their way on to NAIA rosters this season. L-C State was a natural pit stop for highly-touted Washington high-school products like Curtis Dupart and Kawika Emsley-Pai, who struggled to find regular playing time in D-I and transferred from Georgia Tech and Texas, respectively.

The two players are considered the best athletes on this year’s L-C State roster, but Dupart’s inability to hit consistently, which doomed him at Georgia Tech, may lead him to become primarily a pitcher at his new school. Emsley-Pai may be the odd man out in a three-way battle for the catching job, but his multi-dimensional ability will enable him to secure playing time elsewhere on the field.

In all probability, Lewis-Clark State’s best drafts this year will be one of two seniors—6-foot-5, 250-pound first baseman/outfielder Sean Halton, a former Fresno (Calif.) CC star who hit .371 in 2008 and has massive power potential; or outfielder Paul Martin, a rare four-year player in the L-C State program who hit a modest .305 a year ago. Cheff says Martin is the best non-drafted senior he has ever had, and Martin’s designs on attending dental school worked against his being drafted a year ago.

While awaiting the uniform start of the NCAA Division I baseball schedule on Feb. 20, PG Crosschecker is taking a close-up look at some of the top teams and top prospects in some of the non-D-I components of the college game. Our focus today is on NAIA baseball—and L-C State is appropriately at the forefront of any discussion.

In the accompanying Top 10 ranking, we’ve identified both the top 10 teams and top 10 prospects at the NAIA. Friday we’ll do the same with NCAA Division II as most of the top teams at that level open their 2009 seasons this weekend.

The less-structured environment that symbolizes NAIA baseball means teams can start their seasons whenever they choose—and Mobile (Ala.) and LSU-Shreveport did so with a three-game series in Mobile on Jan. 23-25. Among our projected top 10 teams, California’s Azusa Pacific is the first to open, and does so today. Lewis-Clark State begins its schedule Feb. 13, while No. 3-ranked Bellevue (Neb.) will wait until March 1.

It is relatively uncommon for an NAIA-affiliated school to produce a high-round draft pick—though that did occur as recently as 2007, when L-C State’s record-breaking third baseman Beau Mills was selected 13th overall by the Cleveland Indians. Mills spent his first two college seasons at Fresno State, and found an ideal taker for his services in Lewis-Clark State when he became academically ineligible at Fresno State for his junior season.

In his one season with the Warriors, Mills hit a resounding .458-38-126, setting an NAIA single-season record for home runs in dramatic fashion by slugging three in the national championship game as L-C State won yet another title.

Historically, righthander Tim Belcher, the first overall pick in the 1983 draft from Ohio’s obscure Mt. Vernon Nazarene College, is the highest NAIA draft pick on record.

Last year, 34 NAIA players were drafted—led by Azusa Pacific outfielder Kirk Niewenhuis, picked by the New York Mets in the third round. L-C State had four players selected in 2008, increasing its total through the years to 108.

This year, the best prospect at the NAIA level, according to PG Crosschecker, is Oklahoma City pitcher Ashur Tolliver, an Arkansas-Little Rock transfer. The 6-foot, 170-pound lefthander struggled in Division I a year ago, going just 2-5, 7.94, but he showed flashes of brilliance last summer in the Cape Cod League with three plus pitches, including a fastball that topped out at 94 mph and a slider at 84. If Tolliver can establish any sense of consistency in a new environment this spring, he could emerge as a third- or-fourth rounder.

Southern Poly (Ga.) righthander Nick Fuller is the highest previous draft pick on an NAIA roster this spring. He was a third-round pick of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2006 out of a Georgia high school, but was expelled from school as a freshman at South Carolina for his part in a highly-publicized theft of school property. He landed at Walters State (Tenn.) JC as a sophomore and after going unsigned again after being drafted in the 25th round by the Atlanta Braves last June has surfaced at Southern Poly.

Led by Lewis-Clark State and Tolliver, here’s how we see the 10 best teams and 10 best prospects at the NAIA level:

TOP 10 NAIA TEAMS

Rank Team ’08 Record Top Prospect
1. Lewis-Clark State (Idaho) 58-7 Sean Halton, 1b-of
2. Oklahoma City 57-12 Ashur Tolliver, lhp
3. Bellevue (Neb.) 52-17 Brett Chamberlain, c-rhp
4. Embry-Riddle (Fla.) 44-18 Austin Goolsby, c
5. Lee (Tenn.) 63-10 Julian Alvarez, of
6. Azusa Pacific (Calif.) 46-12 Ryan Delgado, 3b
7. Lubbock Christian (Texas) 53-4 Will Stramp, of
8. Cumberland (Tenn.) 46-21 Robert Post, rhp
9. Southern Poly (Ga.) 39-17 Nick Fuller, rhp
10. Ohio Dominican 40-16 Jonathan Kountis, rhp

TOP 10 NAIA PROSPECTS

Rank Player Pos. College Previously Drafted
1. Ashur Tolliver LHP Oklahoma City Never drafted
2. Jonathan Kountis RHP Ohio Dominican Never drafted
3. Nick Fuller RHP Southern Poly Braves ’08 (25)
4. Sean Halton 1B/OF Lewis-Clark State Rockies ’06 (42)
5. Paul Martin OF Lewis-Clark State Never drafted
6. Ryan Robowski LHP Ohio Dominican Never drafted
7. Brett Chamberlain C/RHP Bellevue (Neb.) Never drafted
8. Nick Wooley RHP William Woods (Mo.) Never drafted
9. Austin Adams SS Faulkner (Ala.) Brewers ’08 (27)
10. Kaohi Downing OF Pt. Loma Nazarene (Calif.) Never drafted
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