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South Dakota State University Athletics
Jackrabbits open 2016 in Mississippi
2/17/2016 5:09:00 PM | Baseball
The South Dakota State University baseball team will open the 2016 season with four games in Starkville, Mississippi, over the weekend.
The Jackrabbits, who finished the 2015 season with a 33-23 overall record and placed second in The Summit League with an 18-11 mark, begin play at noon Friday versus Florida Atlantic. The Owls, who are picked second in Conference USA this season, ended the 2015 campaign with a 42-19 overall record and qualified for the NCAA Tournament.
Saturday, the Jackrabbits will square off against host and nationally ranked Mississippi State in another noon matchup at Dudy Noble Field. The Bulldogs, who historically have been a perennial postseason contender, are coming off a rebuilding 2015 season in which they finished 24-30 overall and 8-22 in the Southeastern Conference. The Bulldogs are ranked in several preseason polls, including No. 11 by Collegiate Baseball, 15th by D1Baseball.com and 20th by Baseball America.
Play wraps up Sunday with SDSU taking on both Florida Atlantic and Mississippi State. The game versus FAU is slated for 10:30 a.m., with the finale against Mississippi State scheduled for first pitch at 3:30 p.m.
The Jackrabbits' two games against Mississippi State are scheduled to be broadcast live on SEC Network Plus, with the games also streamed online at ESPN3.com and through the Watch ESPN app.
THE SERIES: This weekend's matchups against Mississippi State and Florida Atlantic will mark the first time the Jackrabbits have faced either opponent on the baseball diamond.
FOR OPENERS: The Jackrabbits are 2-2 in Opening Day games under head coach Dave Schrage. Three of the four previous Opening Day games were played at neutral sites.
2012: at Murray State (Ky.) — L, 3-2
2013: vs. Waldorf (Iowa) [at Minneapolis] — W, 3-0
2014: vs. Texas Southern [at Jackson, Miss.] — W, 11-1
2015: vs. Northern Illinois [at Clarksville, Tenn.] — L, 10-6
PRESEASON POLL: The South Dakota State University baseball team has been picked to finish third in the Summit League standings during the upcoming 2016 season, according to a poll among the league's six head coaches that was released Feb. 11.
The Jackrabbits received one first-place vote and tallied a total of 17 points for their third-place showing in the preseason poll. Defending regular season and tournament champion Oral Roberts received the other five first-place votes to be tabbed as the favorite with 25 points. Tournament runner-up Fort Wayne was second with 19 points.
Rounding out the poll were Omaha with 15 points, North Dakota State with eight points and Western Illinois with six.
The 30-game Summit League schedule kicks off March 18, when the Jackrabbits open a three-game series at Oral Roberts. ORU will host the four-team Summit League Baseball Championship May 25-28 at J.L. Johnson Stadium in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
CLEMEN CLIMBS THE CHARTS: Although he is slated to move into a starting role this season, Jackrabbit pitcher Andrew Clemen could move into the SDSU career top 10 for appearances this season.
A senior from Des Moines, Iowa, Clemen made 51 appearances — 50 of which were out of the bullpen — in his first three seasons with the Jackrabbits. He needs to pitch in 13 games during the 2016 campaign to move into the top 10.
Clemen also enters his senior season third on the SDSU career charts for strikeouts per nine innings at 9.73. The SDSU record, with a minimum of 60 innings pitched, is 11.40 by Pete Torgerson during his lone season in a Jackrabbit uniform in 1989. Dick Barnes ranks second with an average of 9.99 strikeouts per nine innings from 1964-66.
JACOBSON NEARS TOP 10: Senior outfielder Paul Jacobson is in line to move into the SDSU career top 10 for games played midway through the 2016 season.
Jacobson enters the 2016 campaign having played in 158 career games, including 139 starts, putting him 32 games away from sliding into the 10th spot. Jacobson's uncle, Pat Schmidt, ranks in a tie for seventh in games played by a Jackrabbits with 193 from 1992-95.
Eric Cain holds the Jackrabbit record of 218 games played from 2009-12.
COACH SCHRAGE: Veteran baseball coach Dave Schrage (pronounced Schrag) enters his 28th season as a collegiate head coach — and fifth at South Dakota State University — during the 2016 season. Schrage was hired to take over the reins of the Jackrabbit baseball program on Aug. 8, 2011.
Under Schrage's leadership, the Jackrabbits have compiled a 114-109-1 record and qualified for the Summit League postseason tournament each of the last three seasons.
Schrage enters the 2016 campaign with a 710-771-2 career mark. He recorded his 600th career victory in his first season at SDSU, and tallied career win No. 700, when the Jackrabbits defeated Omaha, 5-1, on April 17, 2015, at Erv Huether Field. Schrage's 100th win at the helm of the SDSU program came on April 11, 2015, in a 5-4 home win over North Dakota State.
In 27 seasons as a collegiate head coach, he has averaged more than 25 victories per season, including seven campaigns with 32 or more wins. He has coached players who have earned all-conference honors 75 times and 42 of his former student-athletes have gone on to play professionally, including 2015 draft picks Zach Coppola (Philadelphia Phllies) and Adam Bray (Los Angeles Dodgers).
THE ROSTER: The 2016 SDSU baseball roster features 37 players from eight different states plus one Canadian province. Of the 37 players, 12 are from Minnesota and South Dakota, seven are from Iowa, while Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Vermont are represented by one player each. In addition, one player is from the Canadian province of British Columbia.
By class, nine are seniors, nine are juniors, 11 are sophomores, three are redshirt freshmen and five are true freshmen.
A LOOK AHEAD: The Jackrabbits continue play in the southern states, traveling to Wilmington, North Carolina, for four games at the Hughes Brothers Challenge.
SDSU will meet host UNC-Wilmington on Friday, Feb. 26, followed by games Feb. 27 against Virginia Commonwealth and Eastern Kentucky. The Jackrabbits and Eastern Kentucky will close out weekend play with another matchup on Feb. 28.
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