To go from 6-35 two years ago after the fallout of the hazing scandal to a winning record this season is a tremendous accomplishment by HC Nicholson and the players in the program.

NCAA Division I baseball programs will continue with increased roster size and scholarship limits for the 2023-24 academic year in a somewhat similar manner to the way they have been impacted for the past three years.

There will be a 40-man limit on roster size for Division I programs during the 2024 baseball season.

Up to 32 student-athletes will be allowed to receive a baseball scholarship – an increase from the normal limit of 27 in Division I.

The additional “counters” (scholarship athletes counting against the team scholarship limit) must be included in the maximum team limit of 11.7 scholarships and must be provided the minimum scholarship value of 25%.

The reasons for these increased limits include:

• Many athletes still having an additional year of eligibility available as the result of the NCAA rulings related to the pandemic.
• Major League Baseball reducing the size of the MLB Draft from 40 rounds to 20 rounds.
• The decrease in the number of minor league teams from 162 to 120.

Sac State was non-competitive as an affiliate member of the Big West 20+ years ago when they were in the conference from '97-'02. They were shown the door after the 2002 season, which was around the time that Northridge moved into the Big West (2001), Irvine brought back their program (2002) and Riverside moved up from D2 (2002 was their first year as a full member after playing a Big West schedule in 2001 but the games weren't factored into the conference standings). There wasn't a need to have Sac State as an affiliate member anymore to have eight teams after all of the attrition from most of the football schools leaving during the 1990's.

UC Davis scored nine runs in four of their losses against Irvine and UCSB, two of the better pitching staffs in the conference, and 13 runs in their other two losses at Irvine. It didn't help the Aggies build any consistency playing only on Tuesdays for three weeks after the St. Mary's series while everybody else was playing a regular schedule. Riverside has one of the worst pitching staffs in Big West history.

Nice win yesterday for the Aggies against Bakersfield, who went 5-1 against Riverside and Fullerton to start conference play.

The Big West conference RPI is 19th out of 31 conferences so the conference is down, although some of that RPI is due to UC Davis and Riverside being so bad along with Fullerton, UCSD and Bakersfield having RPI's well below 150.

The top part of the conference is decent with UCSB, Irvine and Cal Poly all having RPI's in the 60's. Northridge actually has the best RPI at 35 but they are going to have trouble being factors in the conference race sitting at 4-6, although their schedule was front loaded with the four best teams (those three listed earlier and Long Beach).

Nicholson is a very good hire under the circumstances, leaving a comfortable position at a strong program like Stanford. The school did the right thing hiring somebody with no previous affiliation to the program to make a clean break from the past.

Vaughn makes 140K, which makes him one of the lowest paid HC's in the Big West. One could say that his salary is commensurate with his coaching performance. The only HC's that have been paid lower salaries are Percival before he quit (and he obviously didn't need the money with what he made in MLB), Beard at Bakersfield and Newman at UCSD when they were in D2.

Reggie C makes 200K at Sac State. One again, his salary is commensurate with his coaching performance. The only coaches in the UC (not counting UCLA or Cal) or CSU systems who are making more than Reggie C are Checketts at UCSB and Valenzuela at Long Beach.

Cal Baptist is playing a series up there March 5-7. Those are the only games I have seen scheduled for UC Davis with so few schedules released.

The Big West is playing four game series this year instead of the usual three game series. DH's every Sat, still TBD if both games will be 7 innings on Sat or if one game will be 9 innings and the other game will be 7 innings on Sat.

UCSB just added lights to their ballpark over the summer.

Northridge has funding in place to add lights to their ballpark, among other projects that will be taking place at the facility. Lights will probably be installed for 2021 and no later than for the 2022 season.

For the new Big West members, the ballparks at Bakersfield and UCSD both have lights.

UC Davis was not fully funded for baseball a few years ago and it was mentioned in articles in the paper up there.

Baseball could be fully funded now and Naive Ned hit on the major reason (new AD). That's why I said unless things had changed, UC Davis was not fully funded, and they could have changed under Blue.

Lack of a lights is a competitive problem. It limits who you can schedule because of the inability to play night games on Tuesdays and Fridays. Also, it hinders a team when they have to adjust to playing at night after practicing 100% of the time during the day and playing 80%-90% of the games during the day.

Lack of funding is also a competitive problem. Unless the situation has changed, UC Davis doesn't allocate the full 11.7 scholarships for baseball. That obviously limits how much scholarship money can be divided up between the 27 players on scholarship (baseball has eight walk-on spots) on a 35 man roster. The Big West mandates in priority sports that schools must fund up to at least 80% of the scholarship limit and I have heard that UC Davis wasn't doing much more than that, which would leave them around two scholarships short.

Congrats to the Aggies. This could have easily been a sweep with better relief pitching yesterday after UC Davis got out to an 7-3 lead.

Northridge should be a series win for you guys up there because you play well at home and Northridge is awful on the road. Irvine will be very tough down here and they need to win every game they can to keep their RPI up to get into a regional. Utah is a hitters park so they will probably win that series playing at home but with that being the last series of the season for both teams, who knows.

Fullerton was 38-4 against UC Davis going into the series, with ten sweeps and four 2-1 series wins. That is one of many streaks that will be ending for Fullerton this year. 44 straight winning records, 44 straight years with 30+ wins, 27 straight years playing in a regional. Stellar job by the Fullerton coaching staff this year (sarcasm).

Here are the two main issues.........

Fullerton has the worst pitching staff in the history of the program with an ERA over five. Lost 90% of the IP from last year with five guys getting drafted, tried to replace them with FR instead of JC guys who would come in ready to contribute and a lousy pitching coach is doing a piss poor job of developing a young pitching staff and almost none of them are getting better.

The offense has hit for a pretty good average but Fullerton has very little power or speed so it usually takes three guys getting on base to score unless a SAC bunt is used where an out is given up and the inning is limited to one run.

Interesting question. UC Davis would be more competitive in the WAC. They wouldn't have Fullerton, Long Beach, Irvine, Cal Poly and UCSB to deal with. Three of those teams have been to Omaha in the last five years and the other two have hosted regionals and/or super regionals during that time.

NMSU, Grand Canyon and Sac State are the only WAC teams that would be competitive most of the time on annual basis in the Big West.

The bottom teams in the WAC (Bakersfield for now, Seattle, UTRGV, Utah Valley, Northern Colorado, Chicago State) are worse than the bottom 2-3 teams in the Big West in a given year, some much worse on an annual basis. One of those teams will occasionally poke its head up before sinking back down (usually either Bake or Seattle).

Ah dammit, forgot about them.

It's 11.7 because in 1991 there was a 10% cut by the NCAA from a max of 13 scholarships for Title IX reasons and the number has never budged since then. I had heard in the past that UC Davis was underfunded with scholarships for baseball. I don't know if that has changed. The Big West mandates for all priority sports (such as baseball) that schools have a minimum of 80% of the scholarship limit used so in baseball that number is just under 9.4 scholarships.

Overall budget for baseball would be a factor in why UC Davis doesn't recruit much in SoCal (or not handing out all 11.7 scholarships or not traveling much by plane for a non-conference series). Another reason is there are less teams to compete against in recruiting for players in NoCal, especially public schools, compared to down here. More players down here and a lot more competition for them. North of Fresno, the only D1 public schools in CA are Cal, UC Davis and Sac State. That's why Fullerton likes to recruit in the Sac metro area and has had quite a bit of success finding players up there.

With hoops (M and W) and FBS football there is no splitting up of scholarships so if somebody screws up, they don't lose 1/2 of the scholarship, they get run off. In FCS football and all other sports, the scholarships can be partials. Almost nobody in baseball is on a full ride with baseball-only scholarship money. It's too hard to do that with 27 guys splitting up 11.7 scholarships.

Good call on Irvine. Fullerton and Irvine look like the Big West teams that are most likely to be playing in regionals. Fullerton will hit better this year (strong at all four spots up the middle and several recruits on the corners will be upgrades) but the pitchers will take their lumps early as they get used to either being in the weekend rotation or to D1 ball. Irvine has just about all of their pitching and lineup back and brought in three JC guys who will be difference makers.

If there is a third team, it will probably be either Long Beach (due to having most of their team back and getting healthier after being a M*A*S*H unit last year) or UCSB (due to also having most of the team back and several top 25 recruiting classes the last few years).

Cal Poly will end up in the top half of the standings like they almost always do (Lee has been in the top four in the standings in 14 of 16 seasons) but they are playing a difficult non-conference schedule so they probably won't have the W/L record for at-large consideration.

5/3-5/5 - UC Davis at Fullerton

Most teams don't play non-conference weekend series with teams that are within a couple of hours because that's what midweek games are for in order to fill out the schedule. The exception usually ends up being the bye week in a conference schedule.

Here's a look at the other side of the coin in the conference, the teams down here and their weekend series against local opponents.

Fullerton - Long Beach (they play a non-conf series each year for tradition and attendance reasons), San Diego State (bye week)

Long Beach - Fullerton (see above)

Northridge - P'dine, USC (bye week)

Irvine - None

Riverside - None

UCSB - None

Cal Poly doesn't really fall into this category due to their location and the only "local" teams for them being Bakersfield (two midweek games) and Fresno (none this year). Their closest opponents for weekend series are Pacific (3 1/2 hour drive) and UCLA (3 hour drive, bye week). They H/A midweek games every year with Santa Clara (don't know what the connection is), P'dine (Larry Lee played there) and sometimes San Jose.

Sorry to have offended you.

Results since the senior led regional team in 2008.

2009 - 13-42, 5-19 (9th)
2010 - 26-29, 9-15 (7th)
2011 - 18-26, 10-14 (7th)
2012 - 27-30, 12-12 (5th)
2013 - 19-37, 5-22 (10th)
2014 - 23-31, 7-17 (7th)
2015 - 30-26-1, 9-15 (7th)
2016 - 17-36, 5-19 (9th)
2017 - 21-30, 10-14 (5th)

UC Davis has gotten over .500 overall once in the last nine years. They have finished 5th twice in the last nine years, including last year. The track record has been after their better seasons (2012, 2015) things come crashing down the next season (last place in 2013 and 2016). With UC Davis finishing fifth and losing three SP's and their closer, the cupboard for the pitching staff is pretty bare until proven otherwise. UC Davis hasn't recruited at a level to immediately replace personnel losses (either with newcomers or with roster depth), which is why the ebb and flow from mid level to the bottom of the conference. The tendency is to build (2012), regress (2013), build (2015), regress (2016). UC Davis might win a few more non-conference games in 2018 but with the way the Big West looks for 2018, things don't look favorable to do that well in the conference standings.

Going to play neutral Devil's advocate here. How do you expect Davis to be relatively close to .500 overall and in conference after losing all three SP's, two of whom were drafted in the teens? The history up there is when Vaughn has a new pitching staff on the weekends, the results are poor because of the lack of recruiting (i.e., guys usually don't make an immediate impact and he has to develop them over 2-3 seasons). FWIW, Davis does have potential on offense to keep them competitive but the pitching is going to be a major problem. This looks like a down year for the Aggies.

In terms of Big West teams, the top three are the same as last year - Fullerton, Long Beach, Cal Poly (who will be better overall after a disastrous start in '17 that sank their regional hopes). UCSB will be the next in line with several top 25 recruiting classes. At least three of those teams will be in regionals. Hawaii will be better (return almost everybody, losing only 2 position players and 1 SP). Irvine's pitching will be much better (hitting will be an issue). Northridge will be about the same and they finished in 4th. Riverside will be about the same but they are starting to recruit better thanks to Percival's name (and bloodlines - son was in BA's top 500 pre-draft last year as a HS SR).