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For a conference that produced six College World Series champions in a 14-year period from 1953-66 and yet hasn’t sent a team to Omaha since 1984, the Big Ten has largely been living off its past in recent years. Nothing is expected to change in 2012, but the conference has a fresh new face this season that’s expected to make its presence felt on the national stage: Purdue.
The Boilermakers haven’t won a league championship in 103 years, but stand to field their best team ever this season with the return of all nine regulars and all but one key arm from a club that tied the school record for wins (37) a year ago. Among the holdover talent is catcher Kevin Plawecki (.341-2-39), third baseman Cam Perkins (.349-8-53) and closer Nick Wittgren (2-3, 3.18, 12 SV), all juniors who all have a solid chance of being drafted in the first 10 rounds in June.
As much optimism as surrounds the reinvigorated Purdue program, it has been tempered a bit by the loss of potentially the team’s best prospect, right-hander Brad Schreiber (4-0, 3.80), a victim of Tommy John surgery. The Boilermakers were also supposed to move into their new $10.3 million campus facility, Alexander Field, but construction delays in the fall have pushed back the scheduled opening until 2013.
Alexander Field was named in honor of the family of former Purdue coach Dave Alexander, the winningest coach in program history. He won 407 games in his coaching career and set the previous school mark of 37 victories in a season in 1986.
Current Purdue coach Doug Schreiber, who has 380 wins in 13 seasons and was a four-year starter for Alexander from 1983-86, is expected to add to all the renewed excitement surrounding the Boilermakers program as he is squarely in line to break Alexander’s career wins mark this season. No matter what accomplishments Schreiber achieves with his 2012 team, though, he is still a long way from topping his father Ken’s Indiana state prep record of 1,010 coaching wins that he assembled in a legendary 38-year high-school coaching career that ended the year before the younger Schreiber took over the coaching duties at his alma mater.
HOW THEY STACK UP
Overall/conference won-loss records from 2011 indicated; preseason national ranking in parentheses, expectation level denoted -- College World Series= CWS, NCAA Super Regional= SR, NCAA Regional= R
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