Long Beach State University Athletics
Dirtbags to host Cal State Fullerton this weekend
5/11/2010 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 11, 2010
Long Beach, Calif. -
Complete Baseball Release in PDF Format 
Leading Off
Long Beach State plays its final midweek game on the road this week, travelling to USC for a late evening matchup with the Trojans at 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12 at Dedeaux Field. After the Dirtbags come back from Los Angeles, the team faces its biggest rival in Cal State Fullerton. The Dirtbags will attempt to claw back into the conference race by taking down the conference leaders in a three-game series at Blair Field, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Friday. The Saturday contest has been moved to 2 p.m. to accommodate Jewels of the Night, and then the team finishes the series on Sunday at 1 p.m. All three games can be followed via live audio or gametracker at www.longbeachstate.com, and the games can also be heard via iPhone through the KBeach app, a new service provided by campus radio.
It's A Wrap
Playing their final non-conference series last weekend, the Dirtbags dropped a pair of one-run contests to Stanford, falling 3-2 on Friday and then 4-3 in ten innings in Saturday, taking tough losses after strong starts from Andrew Gagnon and Jake Thompson. In the final game of the series, however, the team hit three home runs, a season-high at home on the way to a 10-5 victory over the No. 30 Cardinal, keeping the team over .500 on the season against ranked opponents at 7-6.
Watching the Weather
With Long Beach State's 13-4 win over Pacific, Head Coach Mike Weathers won his 300th game as the skipper of the Dirtbags, reaching the milestone in his ninth year at Long Beach State. The coach also announced that 2010 will be his last at the helm of the Dirtbags, retiring at the end of the season, with Head Associate Coach Troy Buckley assuming the role of head coach going forward for the rest of the year.
Scouting USC
USC has fallen to last place in the Pac-10, but the Trojans are just under .500 overall on the year at 23-24 despite a 5-13 overall record in conference play. Ricky Oropesa leads the Trojans with a .353 batting average, and has also hit 13 home runs and 18 doulbes, sluggin .674 on the season, having started every game on the season. Ther is a little big of drop off to the rest of the team, however, and the team's ERA of 4.60 has been a source of weakness for the Trojans.
Scouting Cal State Fullerton
The Titans started out the season ranked No. 3 in the nation, but stumbled out of the gate, falling entirely out ot the Top 25 at one point with a 7-9 record, but have won 23 of their last 28 games to move back into the Top 10 and into first place in the Big West with a 15-3 record in league play, dropping one each to UC Irvine, UCSB and Pacific. Gary Brown is having an outstanding season, hitting .453 with six home runs and 28 stolen bases to lead the Titans.
Last Time Out
The Dirtbags have previously played both of these opponents in the earlier half of the year, but lost both to the Trojans and the Titans. The Dirtbags played USC at Blair Field to open up March, but after taking a 3-0 lead, a seven-run third by the Trojans staked USC to a lead that Long beach State couldn't recover from in a 10-5 loss, which featured three home runs by the Trojans. On the first weekend of the season, Long Beach State traveled to Goodwin Field for a single-game against the Titans, and Branden Pinder, in his first start of the season, allowed five runs over six innings as the Cal State Fullerton beat Long Beach 8-1.
