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Before we go on to take a look at where MSU landed in this week's updated polls, I just want to take a minute and say thank you to all of the MSU baseball coaches and supporting staff for making baseball happen this weekend. After Hofstra was unable to leave the New York area to travel to Starkville, the coaches didn't just sit around and wait on next weekend. They scoured the country looking for an opponent, and luckily in the eleventh hour they found the very talented Western Carolina Catamounts. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read Bob Carskadon's story today on exactly how the whole process transpired to make last weekend happen. Really fascinating and impressive stuff. Also, kudos to MSU transportation director Everett Kennard, who drove to and from Cullowhee, North Carolina to pick up the Western team and took them home last night. Let's hope his recovery from Trucker Speed overdose is coming along well.
Thanks to all those efforts by the staff, MSU was able to take on the Catamounts at Dudy Noble, and thanks to Brett Pirtle, Trevor Fitts and a few others, MSU took two of three from Western to start off the season with a series win. Going into the weekend, the Bulldogs had been ranked in the top-ten of each of the four major polls. Would that change? Let's take a quick look:
| Pollwatchin': Week One | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poll | Ranking | Previous | Link | |
| Baseball America | 7 | 8 | BA | |
| College Baseball Newspaper | 2 | 2 | CBN | |
| NCBWA | 7 | 4 | NCBWA | |
| Perfect Game | 5 | 6 | PG | |
Well, I guess this is about where we expected State to be with little room for shakeup in the opening weekend. The main reason why you see MSU rise a spot in two of the three polls is that Indiana lost three games on the weekend, and the Hoosiers were ranked ahead of MSU by both Baseball America and Perfect Game. Things stay stationary in the CBN, and State takes a bit of a dive with the National Collegiate Baseball Writers.
Typically, you will see some slight variation in the polls early in the year as teams travel to season opening tournaments and have a rougher go of it than they expected. As for MSU, I would imagine that, barring something catastrophic, State will stay around where it is currently ranked until SEC play starts, due to a fairly manageable non-conference schedule. The only time where things could get testy for them may be when they head to Tuscon in a few weeks. Until then, I would expect to see these numbers stay around the same, unless another poor soul takes a dive in front of us, or if State itself takes an unexpected turn for the worst.
That's it for this week's Pollwatchin'. Back to your regularly scheduled viewing of Big Bang Theory reruns!
