BYU baseball 2015
 

BYU baseball starts the 2015 season today against #16 ranked UC Santa Barbara. Kolton Mahoney starts for BYU today. He was drafted by the Brewers in the 23rd round at the end of last season but decided to return for his junior year and improve his draft position. Last year was his first season back from a mission. He throws very hard but needed to work on his control last year. When his control is there he's a dominating type of pitcher. He had a no-hitter in a game last year. I think he eventually plays in the majors. The rest of BYU's rotation should be pretty solid. The offense was young and took a hit last season, but should be improved.

The schedule to start the season is tough: 4 games at #16 UCSB folowed by 4 against #19 Nebraska at a neutral site, and then 4 more at Oklahoma. If they can come out of the first 12 games with a winning record they could turn out to be pretty good this year.

Would love for BYU baseball to be good again.

0-4 to start.

http://byucougars.com/schedule/m-baseball

BYU finally wins a game

http://byucougars.com/schedule/m-baseball

I saw BYU play A&M in College Station many, many years ago. They lost. Not many fans in attendance. One of the scouts with the radar gun commented that the highly rated pitcher, who was getting roughed up, "must be a cold weather pitcher."

I never did go to a BYU baseball game when I was in college. At A&M, relatively, college baseball was a big deal back in the day.

Looks like 1-7

14 runs in 8 games. That's losing baseball.

When I went to BYU the baseball field was on the way home on my walk from campus. Towards the end of winter semester after my classes were over for the day I liked to go sit on the grass behind the outfield for free and study for my upcoming finals while enjoying being outside and occasionally looking up to see BYU beating Air Force or Utah or whoever they usually beat up in WAC play back then. A few other students liked to do the same, but it was never very many. Despite being a pretty consistent winner in the 80s and 90s, for many years baseball seemed to be at the very bottom of the athletic department's totem pole for some reason. In 93 or 94 they were actually really good and ended up within one game of making the college world series. They made it to the championship game of their NCAA regional, losing to Florida State. That was back when their pitching ace was Ryan Hancock.
But over the years the winning was seemingly just taken for granted by the administration.

I think more recently the administration has started to treat the sport better. They finally got a much better stadium thanks to the Miller family's donation and riding the coattails of women's softball, but unfortunately the years of administrative neglect took its toll to the point that the facility upgrade came way too late. I was hoping for a quicker recovery, but it's probably going to take a few more years.

Before A&M baseball got popular in the late 80s and 90s, I would attend a game once in a while with my dad. Me and my brothers. And they had this reliever that would come on, and they would play the Hawaii 5-O theme song. He was my favorite. One evening I was at the movie theatre at A&M, and we saw him sitting waiting for the movie to start. I went up to him and asked him for his autograph. He said sure. And then the guys around him said, "what about my autograph?" And I realized it was probably the whole team there for the movie.

Good times. I was a big baseball fan as a kid. Watching Dale Murphy on TBS. Caught a couple three Astros games in Houston, one of them against the Braves.

I attended many a BYU baseball game, but now BYU baseball is nothing more than a joke.

4-10

They've been playing better: 9-2 in their last 11 games. So far 4-2 in the league and tied for 2nd. They play Utah tomorrow and then 3 games at current first place San Diego. We'll have to see how they do in those.

http://byucougars.com/schedule/m-baseball

They made the WCC tourney.

http://byucougars.com/schedule/m-baseball

How the mighty have fallen. Once upon a time, they finished fifth in the College World Series.

Vance Law destroyed the program. No NCAA appearances since 2002. It's going to take a little while to get back to respectability but they're going in the right direction now. The kid they just signed out of San Diego (non-LDS) is probably right up there at the level of guys like Hancock/Cory Snyder/Wally Joyner.

BYU got swept by 1 seed San Diego this year but were a combined 4-2 against the other two teams. USD pretty much had their way with the other three teams that made the tournament but somehow lost some games to the lower rung WCC teams this year. They will be heavy favorites, but as the 3 seed BYU won't have to face them right away and it may only take one win against them to win the tournament.

what's it going to take for BYU to reach the NCAA tourney or whatever they call it?

They'll have to win the double elimination WCC tourney to make it to the NCAAs. It can be done in as few as 3 games. BYU has played well against Pepperdine and LMU but not well against the 1 seed San Diego. However, I think USD was the first conference team they played against this year back when BYU was not playing very well in general. It was also at USD. They don't have to play them in the first game, which helps.

Eliminated. So how do we feel about the season? On the right track?

Yeah, I think so. Picked for 6th, finished 3rd. I heard the coach interviewed on BYUSN today and he's hard not to like. I think he's doing the right things and the recruiting is getting better. The administration neglected baseball so badly for so many years. It's not going to be an overnight recovery.