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Feb. 20, 2013
THIS WEEK: The Washington baseball team (1-3) returns to the road for a second straight, four-game weekend trip. This weekend, the Huskies will travel to Beaumont, Texas for the YMBL Cardinal Classic, hosted by Lamar University. The UW was scheduled to play two games each vs. Creighton and host, Lamar, but a snowstorm in the Midwest has cancelled Creighton's travel plans and the Blue Jays will be unable to make the trip. Instead, the Huskies will face Lamar in a four-game series. Friday's first game starts at 6:00 p.m. CT/4:00 p.m. PT. On Saturday, a doubleheader gets underway at 1:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. PT and the series wraps up Sunday with a 1:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. PT first pitch. Fans can follow live stats of all four games via the "Gametracker" links here on this page. There is no other live coverage (audio or video) of the games. TAKE TWO IN BEAUMONT: Washington has never before faced Lamar on the baseball diamond, but only due to a rainstorm in Texas last year. During spring break of 2012, the Huskies were scheduled to travel to Beaumont (located about 85 miles east of Houston) for a game vs. the Cardinals (the trip also included a visit to the University of Houston), but the entire trip was scrapped due to the weather forecast, which called for torrential rain. Washington has played at a few other sites in the state of Texas (Rice, Texas A&M and a minor-league park in El Paso), but never at Lamar. TEAM BREAKDOWN: Washington's 2013 roster includes 13 players who had an at bat for the UW last season and eight pitchers who made at least one appearance on the mound (that total does not include Jeff Brigham and Joshua Fredendall, who will miss this season due to injury but should return in 2014). Those 13 returning position players accounted for 1,256 at bats (69.1 percent of the UW's total of 1,818 last season) and for 346 of the Huskies' 518 hits (66.8 percent). On the mound, returning pitchers made a total of 24 starts in 55 games last season (43.6 percent) and accounted for 251.3 of the 485.0 innings pitched (51.8 percent). Returning pitchers combined for a 20-11 won-lost record in 2012. ANOTHER STRONG SCHEDULE: Well-known college baseball website BoydsWorld.com released its strength of schedule numbers for the coming baseball season and, as usual, Washington's ranked very high. In fact, the 2013 Husky baseball schedule ranks as the third-hardest in the nation, behind only USC and California. Of course, the top nine on the list are all Pac-12 programs with only Washington State (24th) and Arizona (49th) ranking outside of the top nine. The rankings list all 298 Division I programs. NEXT UP: Washington opens the home schedule March 1 when Cal Poly visits for a three-game series at Husky Ballpark. Game times are 5 p.m. on March 1, 2 p.m. on March 2 and 1 p.m. on March 3. The homestand continues when SeattleU comes to Montlake on March 5 and then the Huskies hit the road for their first-ever trip to LSU, March 8-10. GAME PREVIEWS: GoHuskies.com has done away with the old, traditional "weekly notes" for many sports this academic year, so for the coming baseball season, this will be the manner in which each week's games will be previewed. The hope is that, with all of the links provided (particularly to the team's roster and bios, which will be regularly updated throughout the season, including updated career statistics), that fans will have much more information at their fingertips via this page than they ever had via old-style notes. If you have any thoughts on other links or information that might be included, please click on the "feedback" link at the very bottom of this page and let us know. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
