BASEBALL AMERICA PRESEASON RANKINGS
Rank; School; 2014 record; Final ranking
1.; Vanderbilt; 51-21; 1
2.; LSU; 46-16; 22
3.; Houston; 48-18; 11
4.; Virginia; 53-16; 2
5.; Texas Tech; 45-21; 9
6.; Florida; 40-23; 18
7.; TCU; 48-18; 5
8.; Oklahoma State; 48-18; 10
9.; Miami (Fla.); 44-19; 23
10.; Texas; 46-21; 4
11.; UCLA; 25-30; NR
12.; Louisville; 50-17; 6
13.; South Carolina; 44-18; 25
14.; Mississippi State; 39-24; NR
15.; Rice; 42-20; NR
16.; Maryland; 40-23; 14
17.; North Carolina; 35-27; NR
18.; Arizona State; 33-24; NR
19.; Kennesaw State; 40-24; 16
20.; Oregon; 44-2;0 NR
21.; Florida State; 43-17; 19
22.; Central Florida; 36-23; NR
23.; Cal State Fullerton; 34-24; NR
24.; Clemson; 36-25; NR
25.; Liberty; 41-18; NR
The sun rises on a new college baseball season Friday, and the view around here is a distinctly different this spring.
Georgia Tech? The defending ACC champion got barely a sniff in the preseason polls.
Georgia? Coming off a losing season. Georgia State. Ditto.
Kennesaw State? Stand back.
The Owls, after the best season in school history, are ranked in four of the five national baseball polls, as high as No. 19 by Baseball America. They are favored to win the Atlantic Sun Conference, which they won for the first time last year. But foremost, when KSU faces Liberty at 4 p.m. at Stillwell Stadium, the plotted destination isn’t just a few weeks of happy baseball.
It’s another run at the NCAA tournament.
“You hope you end up winning the Super (Regional) this year and get to Omaha (site of the College World Series),” coach Mike Sansing said. “That would be the goal.”
It would be an almost comical one, except that the Owls nearly did it last year. Transformed by a midseason 16-game win streak, KSU (40-24) swept its way through the A-Sun tournament, qualified for its first NCAA tournament and won the NCAA Regional in Tallahassee, Fla. — shot down Alabama in the final — before falling to Louisville in two close games in the Super Regional, just shy of the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
No team had gone so far in its NCAA debut since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999. And the hangover is palpable.
“It was the most fun I ever had playing baseball,” said junior outfielder Alex Liquori, a preseason All-American and the team’s most productive returning player. “We tried to keep it low-key about the winning streak and not talk about it, but the regional and the conference tournament, it was just unreal. Lotta fun playing those games.”
It wasn’t just fun. It also suggested a reordering in the state’s pecking order. Tech and UGA may not boss Georgia as they once did.
“We’re just as good as them,” Liquori said. “We play them every year, and we beat them a good bit. I think we’re right there with them.”
This is a transcendent time for the former little commuter school in Cobb County. Trailing only UGA and Georgia State in enrollment (25,714 undergraduates), Kennesaw State’s transition to Division I athletics, begun in 2006, comes full-circle this fall when the school fields its first football team.
And the baseball program just laid out the possibilities.
“I’d say the timing is perfect,” athletic director Vaughn Williams said. “We’ve been climbing in a lot of things, not beginning with football. You have a new culture of what it is to be Division I.”
Brought in from the University of Connecticut in 2011, Williams had heard all the talk about KSU being a sleeping giant, but it wasn’t until the Owls’ run last spring that potential greeted reality. Alumni donations jumped. Sales for football tickets were up. Baseball paraphernalia remained a big seller in the campus bookstore all summer.
“It really showed everybody, gave them a glimpse nationally of what Kennesaw State is and, really, what it will become if we can stay on this path of trying to reach our potential in everything we do,” Williams said.
Act II won’t be easy. Not only did the Owls lose Max Pentecost, winner of the Johnny Bench Award as the best college catcher, to last summer’s MLB draft (No. 11 overall to the Blue Jays). They lost clean-up hitter Bo Way (seventh round, Angels), closer Justin McCalvin (19th round, Blue Jays) and set-up man James McConnell (26th round, Angels).
But five position players return, including Liquori (.354, 42 RBIs) and preseason A-Sun shortstop Kal Simmons. Starting pitching is a team strength, beginning with left-hander Travis Bergen (9-5, 2.89 ERA), who was selected most outstanding player in the Tallahassee regional with a pair of wins.
Perhaps the biggest returnee is the memory of 2014 postseason.
“I think sometimes you have those barriers, mental barriers, and we were able to break through and you hope that will continue,” Sansing said. “It gives your team confidence and I think our guys are confident in what they’re doing.”
Recruiting has become easier — Sansing: “As you’re talking with them, they’re saying “I did see you on TV” — but new players quickly sensed the new opportunities. Griffin Helms, an All-American catcher at Norcross High, recalls “I wasn’t sure what Kennesaw was” when he received his first recruiting email. He was courted by virtually every school in state.
But the more he saw, the more he liked and committed in January of his junior year. Even when Ole Miss and Clemson made late scholarship offers, he stuck by Sansing. Of the 33 players on the roster, all played high school ball in Georgia, 21 of them in metro Atlanta.
“It’s 30 minutes from my house and I knew most of the guys here, played against most of them,” Helms said. “I’ll take these guys every single game against any ACC or SEC school.”
Yes, there remains some major-conference prejudice at KSU, where they view any game against a national program as a proving ground. The Owls are 7-10 all-time against UGA but have won their past two out of three. Against Tech, they are 4-15 but split two games last season. While KSU can’t match Tech in recent MLB drafts — since 2012, 18 Tech players have been drafted to KSU’s 12 — the Owls surpassed Georgia (nine draftees).
But those who think this is all about baseball are missing a larger point.
“For us, this isn’t just a one-time thing, a small school that’s just good at baseball,” Helms said. “We look at this as a (athletic) program that we’re going to keep building on what was here before. With the school growing and us getting a football team, there is so much energy on campus. It’s hard not to like it here.”
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