Long Beach State University Athletics
Jones Wins Big West Player of the Week Award
3/24/2008 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
March 24, 2008
IRVINE--Freshman centerfielder Jonathan Jones (Vacaville) was named the Big West's Player of the Week after going 7-for-12 against San Diego State and No. 11-ranked UCLA last week.
Jones, who was inserted into the starting lineup when senior Chris Nelson was unable to play, has gotten hits in all seven of his starts and had two multi-hit games last week as the Dirtbags swept UCLA. LBSU has now won seven in a row heading into Monday night's game against Harvard (1-9 prior to play at USD on Monday morning) at 6:30 p.m.. The Crimson are the projected winner of the Ivy League.
LBSU, now ranked as high as No. 4 nationally in Collegiate Baseball and No. 5 in the Coaches Poll and Baseball America, begin a busy two weeks. With Harvard tonight, the Dirtbags will play 10 times over 14 days. Following tonight's game, LBSU will embark on a 10-game road trip at No. 31-ranked Pepperdine (Tuesday), at No. 11-ranked California (Friday-Sunday), at No. 17-ranked Stanford (March 31) and at Fresno State (April 1), before beginning conference play at UC Riverside (April 4-6).They close out the road trip at Loyola Marymount on April 8.
Tonight, Brett Lorin (0-0, 0.00) will be making his first collegiate start, while on Tuesday, RHP Tyler Topp (1-1, 1.89) will start at Pepperdine against LHP Robert Dickmann (2-2, 5.01). Pepperdine (15-7) dropped two out of three at Oregon State this past weekend.
Jones is batting .455 to start his collegiate career with 10 runs, a double and a triple. Jones began his collegiate career with back-to-back game-winning hits in the team's sweep over USC.
A number of the Dirtbag freshmen who have excelled to start the season. John Hill has moved into the No. 2 slot at catcher, batting .556, Devin Lohman is batting .300 in 10 starts at second and RHP Jake Thompson is 1-1 with a 3.62 ERA in five starts as the team's No. 3 starter.
