They appear to be making up for lost time. The two teams haven't faced each other since 2019. Their 2020 contests were wiped out by COVID-19. In 2021 they were eliminated by COVID-19 too but mainly because of the difficulty scheduling mid-week games with so many restrictions. And last year it was because Sac filled out its dance card while Davis was sorting through the hazing mess.

Followed by a trip to Seattle they might just have the whole week off.

Really tough to gauge where they are at this point. Utah Valley is usually a bottom feeder in the WAC.

Santa Clara is kind of in the same boat as UCD. Both teams have a lot of really talented student athletes, but both really can't seem to get to .500 or over because they unfortunately have to play teams in their own conferences, which they struggle mightily with. UCD will occasionally beat UOP, Saint Mary's, USF in a mid-week game but those are not usually contenders in the WCC. UCD typically doesn't play the likes of BYU, San Diego, Gonzaga or Pepperdine but one series every few years. That conference is stronger than it looks.

Having said that last year's team would likely be 0-6 right now. Definitely a lot more depth this year.

Saturday weather report says clear Saturday

Corrected: website write-up clarified why Barnes only pitched 2 innings..not a new injury

The bats were pretty quiet but what I hope doesn't happen is a completely different lineup tomorrow in Game 1. The opening day lineup was chosen because those players were the best, so no time to second guess. To some extent they do have to work in some subs with the doubleheader.

Now in the preview they referenced that Leehey 3B, 1B, and RF today) and Iverson (3B, 2B, RF) will play multiple positions-I wonder if this means the coach is planning to mix and match lineups to exploit lefty/righty match-ups at certain positions. If not there's not much reason for them to be moving around.

I'm guessing from the write-up that this is the lineup, but we'll find out for sure in a couple hours. No clue about the batting order.

Catcher: Jack Gallagher-Jr, no, DH
First Base: Joey Wright-Fr., no,SS
Second Base: Theo Forshey-Jr, no,1B
Shortstop: Alex Gouveia-Jr, no, 2B
Third Base: Nick Leehey-So, no, right field
Left Field: Mark Wolbert-So, no, center field
Center Field-Damian Stone-Jr, no, left field
Right Field-Nick Iverson-Jr-no he was at 3B
Designated hitter: James Williams-Sr, no he was the C

Edit: Wow, I was way off here !. The coach even changed it up on JD.

And our current rotation is:
Nate Freeman-Jr
Bryan Green-So
Avery Thau-Fr
Rowen Barnes-So

I would guess that Thau and Barnes are in competition for the Sunday start once conference play begins + the loser of that competition would be the Tuesday starter. I saw Green pitch last year and he looks like the real deal. Once he cuts down on his walks he should be the ace of the staff. There are some players who just look like pro prospects + he's one of them.

Considering how badly UCI clobbered UCD last time out I'll take a non-loss.

I say BFD to that lol. I don't put too much stock into where an athlete is transferring from. Through the years it's become more apparent to me that the big schools often overvalue a high school athlete from an overachieving team in the recruiting process (moreso in men's than in women's sports) and don't realize the error of their ways until said athlete fails to impress and get any playing time. UCD baseball under Peters and Vaughn exemplified this. How many all-everythings never really played for the Aggies and wound up going to a lower level ? Everybody looks good when they're winning against an inferior team. That's the limitation of the recruiting process.

And didn't UCD have a transfer QB from Washington or other PAC-12 school the year after Kevin Daft graduated who thoroughly failed to impress ? Want to say his last name was Paul, but that could be way off

Exactly, it doesn't touch enough students to receive the interest it used to. Part of the problem is the general sterilization of the game atmosphere which accompanied the move to Division I. At UCD events I've attended in the current era I remember being inundated with "this is how you must behave" messages. We all know right from wrong (except for some unnamed college students, who are still trying to differentiate left from right) so this is a little insulting, and it lends itself to a stuffy atmosphere. People know the rules at these games. As Homer Simpson put it "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand." And not caring is the reason for the poor behavior much more often than not knowing the rules.

So what does a stuffy atmosphere have to do with less interest ? Rivalries are often strongest when the two schools and students really dislike each other (or they at least say they do, but leave it at the game) When I was a student every major event (football + men's basketball, and baseball but only when a certain team was visiting) had some features where the students were encouraged to hate on the opposing school. I remember a football game in which they lynched a dummy in a Cal Poly uniform from a Toomey Field goalpost. Now that was pretty extreme but it encaptured the whole "The other team is the enemy and so is anyone who likes them," attitude that made the game more intense and motivated people to really get into it.

Now, you have more of a restrictive atmosphere where you're told what to do and be nice at penalty of cancellation. Is this better or worse ? Depends on who you are and where you are in life. I graduated a long time ago, and as an older alum my days of heckling the other team and getting all wound up during the game are far behind me, so I'm fine with "Everybody be nice" now. In reality everybody should be nice, but it's a bit naive I think (and I'm referring only people in general, not you) to wonder where all the super-passionate fans went.

And it's how society is going in general too I think. As you have more and more people who are engaging in cancel culture and trying to dictate how people should act and what they should say the closer American society creeps toward resembling Nazi Germany or the Chinese Communist Party. I'm not equating a "be nice" message at a football game with the Nazis by any means, just that the more restrictive things get the stronger the comparisons get in today's society.

But once a year we get a portal into the past where people show up in droves to hate and be obnoxious and that is the Causeway Classic. They really should change the name to ""The Nasty Bowl" because the unruly crowd generally dwarfs the hosting university's ability to regulate it, and therefore nastiness is often left unchecked. Or maybe call it the "Toilet Bowl" when it's held at Hornet Stadium ?

Now could we bottle a tiny bit of that nasty football rivalry and spread it to other sports to interest more people ? I don't really think so. If you've been to say a Causeway baseball game at Sac State or Davis it doesn't get very heated-the fans mostly behave. You might have a few people up on the Sac State parking garage yelling insults but I get the impression that this is because they live in their cars and they are just projecting their frustration with their lack of personal life success onto the Aggies.

Take out the football rivalry and the two universities are really just doing their own thing and their identities are not really intertwined.

Now, expanded intramural competition would probably be a lot of fun for the participants , but I don't see it generating much student enthusiasm beyond the events in which they're personally invested.

The people who should care the most (the students) don't care as much about rivalries and school athletic events anymore and the website tries to cater to the students, what with the Twitter wall and all.. The Causeway Cup is all-inclusive, which means it contains 1 or 2 sports they kind of care about and several they don't.

I didn't care for the headline either, thought it was unprofessional and somewhat condescending. The participants are expected to practice good sportsmanship, you would expect the same from journalists.

However, I read the article, did a Google search and MOP stands for "Most Outstanding Player" in equestrian, so it seems the author of the article was trying for a clever pun.

Jed Maddela for the pantheon. Put him at center.

This photo strikes me as a little odd because he's a linebacker holding a football. Generally speaking, a linebacker would really only handle a football if they took it away from an offensive player on the other team in some fashion, right ? I don't know, it just seems like if you're posing with a football in your hands you should be one of the offensive players whose job is primarily throwing, running with, or kicking the ball. You could say the football identifies him as a football player, but the uniform accomplishes that too. The photo is not wrong per se, just seems a little off.

Unless...the intent was to show how large of a human being he is, making the ball look puny.

Bakersfield has won every game I have ever seen in person against the Aggies, so I'm not going. You're welcome for me making this sacrifice.

Actually I'm getting my years mixed up. The regional was indeed in 2008, but Descalso wasn't on that team-he was drafted the year before

The Aggies had a lead going into the 9th inning of the regional elimination game but couldn't hold it . How nice would it have been to have eliminated Stanford from their own regional.

I think that's about the ceiling for the baseball program. UCD not likely to be able to recruit enough elite talent, let enough have enough of them playing well at the same time, to be able to reach the College World Series. You could say something similar about the men's basketball team.

On the positive side it looks like any success the baseball team will have will be more sustainable with Nicholson as head coach. The roster for this season has significantly more transfers, and that experience should mean they make fewer fielding errors if nothing else. Under the old regime they had longer adjustment periods because the majority of the new players were less-experienced freshmen. That this team managed to win 6 games last year with all the adversity they faced was an an enormous accomplishment.

I don't think I heard them but then again I've only been to 1 game so maybe they just didn't this time.

The band is better than I thought they'd be. I kind of expected a bunch of kids in stuffy band uniforms playing songs about clowns and ice cream after the university took over.

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic here or you're looking forward to that series, but March is not a great time weather-wise to be playing in Seattle. Then again it could just as easily be rained out in May

Que ?