Especially if that student initiative to de-fund athletics succeeds and football is eventually cut as a result. Can't be lacking in both fall and spring sports of interest. This isn't UC Santa Cruz. Baseball can survive a potential drop to Division II/III but football can't.

Sac State swept the beach. Guess the dirtbags were a bit overrated.

This is the time of year when the most upsets happen. UC Davis beat Fresno State twice in the first week the year the Bulldogs won a national championship, Yes,Sac State beat a quality opponent but I also don't think Long Beach was the sixth best team in the nation. Sac State is an occasional giant slayer but their ceiling is maybe winning a regional. Just goes to show how useless rankings can be in baseball.

Also 4 of the hornets' wins are against Nothern Illinois, a pretty weak team

And on that note Aggies lost 6-2 to San Francisco on Tuesday. Positive takeaways were the 5 1/3 innings of shutout ball pitched by the bullpen, Jonah Henrickson's homerun, the multi-hit game for James Williams III, and Bryan Green's continued development as a pitcher.

Ironically Williams had his best day at the plate so far in a game where he wasn't the designated hitter and was playing arguably the most physically demanding position on the field-catcher. Some players are just like that-they need to be out on the field to feel completely a part of the game.

Green did give up the runs, but he had a healthy strikeout total, which only points to good things in the future. This is a much smaller roster than normal, so don't expct to see too many variations to the starting lineup (except for maybe batting order) this year. Where they have the player depth to make more substitutions is at catcher and in the infield. Barring injuries the pitching rotation will likely stay the same regardless of performance, and Green will start whenever there's a Tuesday game. This consistency will be good for next year.

Sure, no problem. I too feel as though the school sports website doesn't do the best job of covering the spring sports. It's almost like they think fans will have checked out after basketball season is done.

My understanding is that they only honor players who will complete their degree by year's end (or perhaps the following fall quarter) and have informed their coaches that they will be done competing. I think the pre-game ceremonies are more for allowing the fans to recognize and say goodbye to them. If it weren't about the fans they could just as easily hold private recognition events-and they probably do anyway.

Isn't Fuller from the UK ? Even with whatever scholarships he could get not sure he'dwant to pay for another year out of state tuition just to play basketball.

Saint Mary's swept the weekend series 4-2, 9-3, and 11-1. Seems like the team kind of went backwards there. It is pretty evident they're feeling the effects of a mostly lost practice season. All you can really do is appreciate the small improvements from here on out.

I can already see that the new coach thinks somewhat differently from Vaughn. Nathan Peng scarcely got to bat the previous 3 years in favor of pitching, but he's doing both so far. He moved Kyler Arenado off shortstop to third base and has freshman Nick Leehy at SS instead. That's clearly an acknowledgement that they're building for the future.

What will be interesting to see is how he handles the next three games. All Tuesday games, and a week off for finals. Normally you would have a mid-week starter or employ a bullpen game, but he needs to keep his weekend starters sharp. The first one is tomorrow against San Francisco. Probably a bullpen game because it will be too short of a rest for any of the weekend starters to pitch a meaningful number of innings. The other two Tuesdays he'll probably have all three starters pitch.

And then after a week off they get to travel to UC Irvine. I would say unless you're going to see your family member play that's not a trip I would recommend taking. With only six games of preparation for an opponent that good that series will be very ugly.

Ironically by playing "Don't @#$! your brother" the players (most of the plegemasters now gone) have @#$!'d over their brothers.

Chico State got their lights when the late Steve Nettleton, a local businessman, gave CSUC the money for the stadium. Sounds like it was a package deal. It was much cheaper to do in the early 90's.

I do remember them saying that an approval from the Sac State president came for the lights in 2015, but I can't imagine Sac State just had the money lying around. Sounds more to me like Sac State athletics raised the money and the president simply awarded the funds for the lights as a reward for baseball doing well. They have fewer sports teams and two ancient facilities that probably cost much less to maintain than UCD's.

I wonder if UC Davis will ever learn to stop scheduling 2:30 pm games prior to Daylight Savings Time each year, especially on Tuesdays ? With no lights you have about 3 hours -or slightly less- to get the game in before darkness is a problem. This is complicated by the fact that pitchers typically have stricter pitch limits early on. More pitching changes leads to more garbage time, where you're just sitting around waiting. Also, the crisp, low-scoring games of old time baseball are not so common at the college level. There are more fielding errors and extra-base hits ( largely due to the aluminum bats) that draw the game out. Remember the famous 24 inning game of 2020 ? Took them two full game days to finish it, all because of a couple of errors that lead to all of Loyola Marymount's runs.

One solution could be to play Friday non-conference games at 2 and schedule road games only for any Tuesday games they want to play prior to Daylight Savings Time. This is assuming that the road games are not at Saint Mary's or San Francisco. This series is being played between two teams with no lights. The battle of the not so bright...ballparks.

A 2:00 p.m. start yesterday and they likely finish the game-unless the Aggies had another rally in them.

If they wind up losing to the Gaels 4-2 that's still a decent accomplishment. Saint Mary's is a very good team. They would probably be middle of the pack if they were in the Big West. As Madcitysxott pointed out the Aggies have a very young team. I give Tommy Nicholson and his staff credit for assembling a quality roster under tough circumstances. I was able to find baseball info on most of the new players, and it's not like they filled the team with a bunch of beer-bellied dudes from a tryout camp. It's a mix of the 2021 high school recruits who didn't bail on the program , a couple of junior college transfers, and some guys who were recruited to play, but just didn't make the team in 2021. The only player I can't find any baseball info on is Jacob Barrera. Not sure if he's played baseball the last 2 years.

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In addition to the seniors from last year looks like the Aggies also lost these players from the 2021 roster to transfers:

Zach Carrell-Oklahoma State
Brock Moffiitt-Northwest Nazarene (D II)
Adam Walker-Oklahoma
Jalen Smith-UCSD
Michael Campagna-San Francisco
Jake Spillane (pitching ace)-UC Irvine
Will Bermudez-Mt. Sac (JC)

Also Brett Erwin, who had already graduated and is not part of the group above, will be playing for the University of Maine this year.

Roster is up. 30 players. Some interesting new faces. Nathan Lemos is back. He pitched as a freshman for the Aggies but not since, and now he's a senior. An infielder named Luke Piazza.-wonder if he's related to Mike ? Only 16 players who haver played for the Aggies before. Leroy Yau is also a sports photographer for UCD. Looks like Kaden Hogan played for Long Beach State but transferred to Sierra College.

The other day I was eager to see a baseball game this weekend, but D-I teams don't start play until 2/18, so that left community college and Division II/III. Basically slim pickin's. Looked at some of the N. and Central CA options' websites. Wasn't a surprise that Chico State had a big ballpark with lights, because I think that was built with the intention of hosting minor league baseball. But Stanislaus State now has ditched its sparse bleacher seating for a new grandstand with box seats and lights. Stanislaus State, the Division II CSU in Turlock nobody talks about, has beaten UC Davis to getting lights.

I wonder if it's not even just a money issue at UC Davis. Perhaps some people have complained that merely having lights for baseball is a Title IX problem because the male student athletes would be allowed to have more flexibility with their class schedules and practice times than their female counterparts who play almost the same sport. Even so other universities manage to get it done, so this seems to point more toward incompetent university leadership than stingy donors. I understand that LaRue Field now has lights, but they're just in the batting cages-is that right ? But the sports aren't equal. There's a reason (other than the amount of available land and money) that LaRue Field doesn't have 3,000 seats-there aren't 3,000 people in the region who give a darn about UC Davis softball and want to listen to silly songs and see weird pitching and 302 ft homeruns.. To be fair there aren't that many for baseball either, but there was probably more support back when the volunteers built the current stadium. If they knew what we know now Dobbins Stadium might have half its current capacity or less.

The problem for UC Davis baseball, barring radical changes will all be this:

The team doesn't win because people don't care, but the people don't care because the team doesn't win. And if they won people still probably wouldn't care.

Take this message board for instance. People spend hours scouring the internet for social media posts for a single HS football recruit who may ultimately have little to no impact on the program. All this discussion over what-so the team can go 7-4 and go to a playoff game and lose ? Why ? They care about football. You'll never see this level of fanaticism with UCD baseball.

UC Davis often waits until the last minute to post theirs. I read in the hazing report they are usually finalizing their roster right up to the deadline. What makes them take so long ? I guess the battle for those last couple of roster spots is either very competitive or very uninspiring.

I think Sac State gets their roster out earlier because they have a deeper pool of talent. They'd cut players UCD would probably keep.. Also they're on the semester system so if they make cuts earlier those players have a chance to transfer to junior colleges without having to sit out the season.

I share your concerns about putting the team together, but I think they'll be better than we expect. Nicholson has assembled a coaching staff with diverse experience and they'll be able to get more out of the players than Vaughn and co. He, Ayers, and Thornton all played in the minor leagues (and Ayers spent some time as a scout I think) so they have pro connections which should be good for recruiting. There have been quite a few games where I think Vaughn was simply outcoached.

Assembling the roster is a big task, but I don't think they'l just be raiding the club team and tryouts out of desperation. I believe the interim coaches were also tasked with recruiting, they may have found some good HS players who were uncommitted or JC guys who were eligible to transfer for Spring Quarter. Maybe even a player or two cut by another program cut before semester break ? Nobody who will amaze you but it won't be Artie Lange's "Beer League" either.

According to the UC Davis website roster Nicholson has named two assistants-Andrew Ayers and Zack Thornton. Both played in the pros. Ayers has played and coached for Sac State, so he and Nicholson have probably worked together before, maybe as player and coach. A Google search says Thornton made it to Triple-A as a pitcher in the Mets' minor league system. Ayers played in Single-A for the Royals.

Looks like they really are making a clean break with the previous coaching staff so far.

I doubt they come back. They moved on to a larger and more succesful program.

The 2022 season is likely a lot more about finding useful players for 2023 and beyond than actually being competitive l. I don't think anyone expects Nicholson to win in the next 2 seasons under the circumstances, except maybe Nicholson himself.

According to the schedule the team has only six games to get ready for the Big West. That will be really tough. especially getting the pitchers stretched out to make the equivalent of traditional starts. Maybe he will handle it like major league spring training, where everybody only pitches one or two innings until they get stronger and define their roles themselves. Pitch them on a set schedule ?