Kennesaw State baseball season begins Friday at home against Western Michigan in the third annual Atlanta Challenge. The Owls finished last season with a 17-4 conference record and recorded their first Atlantic Sun Conference regular-season championship. Even with the first seed, the Owls couldn’t secure a victory in the conference tournament and lost in the second round.
Here are three important issues heading into the season:
1. Most players are back: The Owls may not have gotten the results they wanted last season in the conference tournament, after winning the Atlantic Sun championship, but the team is returning fully loaded with 27 players coming back. The top players coming back include preseason All-Atlantic Sun players Gabe Friese, Corey Greeson and Austin Upshaw.
“It’s very helpful and it really added a lot of depth to our team this year with the return of that many guys coupled with the new guys,” coach Mike Sansing said. “It gave us some additional starting pitching depth and depth in our position players. I feel like we got 13 maybe 14 guys that can play multiple positions.”
2. Strong infield: Kennesaw State will be returning four of the five starters from last year's infield, making it one of the most experienced in the conference. Jeremy Howell is the only senior in the group, and last season he batted .285, had a career high with 53 hits and his best fielding percentage (.930) since his freshman season. Grant Williams is a junior who had a slugging percentage of .368 last season and totaled 17 multi-hit games. He will enter this season on a 13-game hitting streak. Upshaw is a junior who led the team with 72 hits and seven home runs. The fourth returnee is David Chabut at shortstop who was honored as a Perfect Game freshman All-American after batting .315, and was named to the 2016 Atlantic Sun all-freshman Team.
“We are 13 to 14 guys strong and have a combination of guys,” Sansing said about his infield. “We have a lot of combinations that I think we can do on paper. Williams can play three spots, Chabut can play three spots, and so there is some flexibility.”
3. Depth on the mound: To have success in college baseball, it is imperative that you have a strong and consistent weekend rotation. The Owls have exactly that with all three starting pitchers returning this season. Friese went 6-2 last year with 61 strikeouts. A.J. Moore went 3-1 with 72 strikeouts, and Tony Dibrell recorded 66 strikeouts and set an individual season record for strikeouts per nine innings, at 10.93. Those three look to be the starting rotation for the weekend, but the Owls also have depth behind those guys in Chris Erwin (13 starts last season), Mason Ward (19 appearances) and Nathan Dupree (possible starter during midweek play).
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