I actually expect the cats to be much improved from last season. I believe our pitching will be the main difference. I'm usually not this upbeat about the baseball team but I am this year. We'll see.

We would have won a lot of games with a decent bullpen last year.

I'll comment on this before going back on bcf hiatus (sorry guys but I wouldn't expect game threads from me this year, at least not early in the season).

I'm with cgd. Looking at the makeup of this team I expect significant improvement. We only had 3 seniors on last years team in Brandon Courville, Joe Powell, and Quinn Atwood. Hoffman will be a huge loss in the lineup but he's just about literally all we lost offensively.

A few guys that either left the program or weren't asked to return:
Would be seniors:
Zacri Sanders
Blake Walden
Would be juniors:
Calvin Bush
Would be sophomores:
Adam Ivey
Shane Daughety
Weston Seay

I'd say that's mostly positive attrition and almost all from our terrible bullpen from last year (Sanders only position player).

The offense was pretty damn good last year and we return every single player aside from
Hoffman (huge loss) and Sanders (positive attrition). An expected lineup with Ortega, Hubbard, Paul, Sherley, Newman, Huber, Scheible, Almendarez should be pretty salty. That's without even knowing what any of the new guys bring to the table. We should be able to score runs with regular consistency all season.

Starting pitching wasn't great last year but wasn't the huge train wreck the relief pitching was. We return our 3 best starters from a year ago in Fraze, Reich, and Baird. If we can get one more starter to step up so we can leave guys like Engle and Pagano in the bullpen it should really help our middle relief. Not sure what to expect on the backend but I think a Leigh/Theriot combo could probably hold a lead if given one through 7 innings. Theriot has the build to be a starter also I always thought. The middle relief is what our season will really depend upon. We had to outslug people last year and if we had to use more than 3-4 pitchers a game we were usually toast. The bullpen was just downright bad. Big if, but if some of these transfers, freshman, and redshirts from last year are any good there's just no way we aren't a significantly better club overall in 2018. We brought in a pretty good handful of new guys to replace those bullpen guys from last year who left or weren't invited back. We need them to be a significant upgrade.

After going through the roster I'm pretty optimistic for a significant turnaround this year. Nothing against Fikac, but I'm hoping the change in pitching coach will be a positive as well. South Alabama and Louisiana are supposed to dominate the league this year (USA ranked in a lot of preseason polls), but despite being the 8 seed in last years sun belt tournament I really feel the expectation should be somewhere in the 3-5 range this season. We went from a very young team in 2017 to a pretty experienced one that's pretty upperclassmen heavy in 2018. Our junior class is really deep and we have a chance to be pretty good the next two seasons if Ty can manage things well and we find some relief pitching.

Also, the preseason all sun belt team released today.

Ortega, Hubbard, Paul made it at 2nd, 3rd, and UTIL,respectively.

Only USA had more selected with 4.0

Massengale said B Lewis and Fraze were throwing really well right now. We need Lewis to be more like his freshman year and not like last season. With Engle it is all about control. He is dominant when he has it. Like you said hopefully the change helps.

Good to hear about Lewis. I kind of had him penciled in as the mid-week guy. He may have had the worst sophomore slump I can recall in college sports in a while.

I'd like to see Engle be a quality arm out of the pen. Like you said, he has control issues and guys with control issues usually aren't starter material cause they can't eat up innings and get deep into games. He'd be better suited coming out of the bullpen for an inning or two and when he's on he could really be a huge plus to that relief staff. Could be a long reliever type we use out of the pen on games the starter struggles. Courville was kind of that guy last year and he's graduated.

2018 Sun Belt Conference Softball Preseason All-Conference Team
Randi Rupp (Texas State, Senior, P)
Devin Brown (South Alabama, Senior, P)
Ivie Drake (Georgia State, Senior, C)
Lexie Comeaux (Louisiana, Junior, C)
Aileen Garcia (UTA, Sophomore, 1B/C)
Kaleigh Todd (South Alabama, Senior, 2B)
Sandra Mendoza (UTA, Senior, 2B)
Ariel Ortiz (Texas State, Senior, SS)
Kristian Foster (South Alabama, Senior, SS)
Alissa Dalton (Louisiana, Sophomore, SS)
Kara Gremillion (Louisiana, Junior, 3B)
Krista Rude (UTA, Junior, OF)
Mekhia Freeman (Georgia Southern, Sophomore, OF)
Kelli Martinez (Louisiana, Senior, OF)
Megan Litumbe (Georgia State, Senior, DP)

Preseason Player of the Year
Ariel Ortiz (Texas State, Senior, SS)

Preseason Pitcher of the Year
Randi Rupp (Texas State, Senior)


TXST picked to finish first in the pre-season coaches poll. High expectations this year.

Two freshmen pitchers and a transfer to compliment Rupp. Here's hoping Cat Osterman can work her magic with, at least, one of them.

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That is clearly a joke and NOT JO...come on, if you read the actual article you would know it was not him.

great news. Like I said, there were retweets to this affect.
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