Sharkbites

As you die-hard fans probably know by now, the Sand Sharks opened their 2010 baseball season today with a 14-3 win against visiting Shorter College. I'm going to make it a habit of making this my first stop after covering a game and give you an instant analysis to rehash the day's events and set the stage for the next game.

Of course, there will always be more to read in the next day's paper, but I hope to give you enough to keep you scrambling back here after the game to read my thoughts. I'll try to come up with a formula and stick to it, but I might tweak it a bit early in the season until I settle on something I like.

Here goes:

Hello, hello, my baseball-loving friends. It has been a while since we got together over here, but USCB baseball season is here to save us from the winter doldrums. We'll have a full page and then some of preview material in Saturday's paper to get you primed for the season, but I wanted to formally kick off the season here on the blog, too.

I had a few things I couldn't fit into the preview package, and I also read somewhere that you folks who read things on the interwebs like lists, so I put together a little list of 10 things you need to know before opening day.

Without further ado, here they are:

Five USC Beaufort baseball players -- three pitchers and two infielders -- are among the 51 players who have been selected to play in the Sun Conference all-star game Saturday at Embry-Riddle's Sliwa Stadium in Daytona Beach, Fla.

If the first official NAIA rankings of the season are any indication, it's going to be quite a showdown for the Sun Conference men's and women's golf titles this spring, and both USC Beaufort teams should be right in the mix.

A year ago, USC Beaufort did not register on the NAIA baseball radar, and understandably so. The Sand Sharks had never played a game and represented a wholly unknown quantity.

After a 33-21 campaign in their inaugural season, which included a fourth-place finish in the Sun Conference, the Sand Sharks are a blip on the radar this year -- a small blip, but a blip nonetheless.

The best thing about playing intrasquad games, USC Beaufort baseball coach Rick Sofield often says, is no matter what happens, the Sand Sharks win.

Unless, of course, it ends in a tie.

And that was the case Tuesday night at Hilton Head Island High School, where the Sand Sharks took their fall practice schedule on the road and played a seven-inning scrimmage. The gray team rallied for four runs in the bottom of the seventh to force a 5-5 tie, and the Sand Sharks called it a night, because these things aren't really about who wins, anyway.

Coach Larry Kimball's goal for his USCB men's cross country team this year is to build enough of a national profile to earn an at-large invitation to the NAIA National Championships -- assuming the Sand Sharks don't upset perennial power Embry-Riddle for the Sun Conference's automatic bid.

Well, the Sand Sharks are off to a good start.

It’s a slow news day (not really, but the U.S. Open got monsooned out) so I figured I would fill you in on USC Beaufort’s spring sports awards. The baseball team handed out some honors after an exceedingly successful debut season in which they went 33-21.

Freshman center fielder R.J. Neal was named the team’s most valuable player after leading the Sand Sharks in a number of offensive categories and covering tons of ground in center.

Neal hit .367 (72 for 196) with three home runs, six triples and 15 doubles. He scored 42 runs and drove in 44.

Despite a tremendously successful debut season, USC Beaufort baseball coach Rick Sofield felt his team had some pressing needs to fill if the Sand Sharks are going to improve in their second season, and Sofield has begun to address those needs. The school announced the signing of six baseball recruits, who you can find out more about below (and I went ahead and threw in LHP Adam Miller, who isn't technically a new recruit but will be a new face for Sand Sharks fans next season). I haven't talked to Sofield about the signings yet, but you can see below that he has addressed his concerns about pitching depth and shoring up the middle infield, while also adding some veteran players to a young roster by adding four transfers (not counting Miller).

It takes a real baseball junkie to find a good reason to stay glued to the interwebs for all three days and 50 rounds of the Major League Baseball amateur draft, especially considering these guys won't see the big leagues until at least next season (with the possible exception of No. 1 overall pick Stephen Strasburg, whose 103 mph fastball could probably help the woeful Washington Nationals right about now).