Baseball Picked to Finish First in Horizon League Preseason Poll

Wright State Head Baseball Coach Rob Cooper

((Contributed by Wright State Sports Information))

The Wright State baseball team has been picked to win the 2011 Horizon League title as the Preseason Coaches Poll was announced Wednesday afternoon by the league office.

The Raiders, who won the regular-season title last season for the first time since 1997, edged out tournament champ Milwaukee for the top spot.  WSU received three first-place votes and 32 points overall while the Panthers also picked up three first-place votes and 31 points.  UIC, which received the other first-place vote, was selected third followed by Valparaiso, Butler, Youngstown State and Cleveland State.

Wright State, under seventh-year head coach Rob Cooper, the 2010 Horizon League Coach of the Year, returns 18 letterwinners from last season’s squad, including Horizon League First Team honorees Casey Henn, Jake Hibberd and Garrett Gray.  Henn, a junior righthanded pitcher, led the conference in earned run average (3.19) and batting average against (.241) in 2010 while ranking second in wins with seven and fourth in strikeouts with 82.

Hibberd, a junior first baseman, was second in the league in 2010 in putouts with 425, sixth in hits with 82, seventh in runs batted in with 54 and eighth in batting average at .368.  Gray, a junior catcher, tied for fifth in home runs with five and was seventh in slugging percentage at .589.  Gray also put together a 28-game hitting streak during April and early May, tying for the ninth-longest streak in Division I last season.

Wright State opens the season next weekend, February 18-20, with a three-game series at Mississippi.  The Raiders and Rebels will play a single game each day, with Friday’s game starting at 4:00 Eastern and both the Saturday and Sunday contests beginning at 2:30 Dayton time.  The home opener at Nischwitz Stadium is set for Friday, March 21, as WSU hosts Canisius in a 4:00 single game as part of the WSU/UD Tournament.

The 2011 Horizon League Baseball Championship is set for May 25-28 at Nischwitz Stadium.  The top six teams will compete in the double-elimination tournament with the winner receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The complete poll results are as follows: