THIS WEEK - SPARTANS WELCOME LOUISIANA TECH FOR WAC HOME OPENER
The San Jose State University baseball team opens the 2009 Western Athletic Conference home schedule against Louisiana Tech University this Friday and Saturday, April 10-11. The Spartans will take their 20-8 overall record up against the visiting Bulldogs, who are now 13-12 on the year. Both teams are 1-3 in the WAC through the first of six weekends of league play.

All four games of the series will be played at San Jose State’s practice and alternate playing facility, Blethen Field, on South Campus off of 10th Street, with the San Jose Giants opening their 2009 campaign inside Municipal Stadium on Thursday night.

David Berner will once again start the set off for head coach Sam Piraro’s squad, as the senior left-hander will look to bounce back from his first losing decision of the 2009 season. The first pitch of the series is now set for 11:00 a.m. on Friday morning, April 10, after the teams were denied a Thursday opener by rainy conditions. Berner has posted back-to-back complete games despite the 3-0 setback at Hawai’i last Friday, April 3. In his only previous appearance at Blethen Field, he tossed a three-hit shutout in this year’s opener back on Friday, February 20, a 3-0 victory over Saint Joseph’s that took just one hour and 54 minutes.

Senior right-hander Ryan Shopshire is expected to start the nine-inning nightcap on Friday, which will begin approximately 40 minutes after the final out is made in the first contest.

On Saturday, April 11, junior left-hander Max Peterson is the probable starter for San Jose State in game one of the twin bill, which begins at 12:00 p.m. The seven-inning nightcap, also slated to begin approximately 40 minutes following the conclusion of the first game, should see the WAC’s ERA leader, senior right-hander Scott Sobczak, on the mound for San Jose State.

Louisiana Tech will go with junior Jamey Bradshaw in a battle of left-handers in Friday’s opener, and with senior right-hander Dylan Moseley in Friday’s nightcap. Freshman right-hander Jeb Stefan is the likely candidate to take the hill for Saturday’s second game, though the Bulldogs have not yet announced a probable for the first game that afternoon. The teams are playing Friday and Saturday in order to take the Easter holiday off on Sunday, April 12.

The Spartans are 14-2 in San Jose this year, including the 3-0 shutout victory over Saint Joseph’s in their only previous game at Blethen this season. They have won eight straight games in San Jose, tied for the seventh-longest home stretch nationally in the NCAA Division I, and swept all four games from the Bulldogs inside Municipal Stadium a year ago.

After the conclusion of this weekend’s series with Louisiana Tech, the Spartans will conclude the five-game Blethen Field homestand with a fourth and final meeting this season against the University of the Pacific on Tuesday, April 14. First pitch is set for 3:00 p.m., with San Jose State seeking to complete the four-game sweep. That will kick off a busy five-game week for the Spartans, who will then travel to Moraga, Calif., for their make-up game at Saint Mary’s on Wednesday, April 15, before heading south a third and final time during this 2009 regular season, down to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a three-game non-conference set at UC Santa Barbara.

SAN JOSE STATE (20-8, 1-3 WAC) vs. LOUISIANA TECH (13-12, 1-3 WAC)
(SJSU Leads Series, 22-16)
Louisiana Tech, like San Jose State, dropped a three-games-to-one series decision to open conference play this past weekend. The Bulldogs were at home against Nevada. After dropping the first three meetings by scores of 8-5, 11-7 and 4-1, Tech won a wild finale on Sunday, 17-14.

The victory to close the weekend series with the Wolf Pack snapped a seven-game losing skid for the Bulldogs, who had a trio of four-game win streaks throughout earlier parts of the season, ahead of the Nevada triumph. Tech is 4-8 on the road thus far in 2009.

Louisiana Tech is led offensively by four players who are batting over .330 and have started all 25 games. That foursome is made up of senior second baseman Kevin Winn (.422, 27 R, 10 2B, 1 3B, 4 HR, 35 RBI, 16 BB), senior outfielder and leadoff man Patrick Thomas (.387, 32 R, 1 3B, 3 HR, 22 RBI, 6-6 SB), junior outfielder Devon Dageford (.358, 28 R, 11 2B, 9 HR, 34 RBI, 7-8 SB) and senior third baseman Chris Kersten (.337, 29 R, 10 2B, 1 3B, 8 HR, 27 RBI). Senior Nick Grunenwald is hitting .311 and has swiped 11 bases on 15 attempts.

On the mound, the Tech ace is senior right-hander Dylan Moseley (3-2, 3.58 ERA, 40.2 IP, 24 SO), who pitched a 10-0 shutout at home over Eastern Michigan on March 8 to garner WAC Pitcher of the Week recognition. No other Bulldog hurler with more 2.0 innings of work, has an ERA lower than 5.00. Junior right-hander John Anderson (3-2, 5.93 ERA) has a team-best 29 strikeouts over 27.1 frames. Right-hander Graham Meyers and left-hander Mike Jefferson, both freshman, have made the most relief appearances, at 13 and 11, respectively. The Bulldogs are last in the WAC in both team ERA (7.37) and fielding (.957).

San Jose State leads the all-time series, 22-16. The teams met a total of seven times a year ago, with the Spartans winning five of those contests, including a four-game sweep at home inside Municipal Stadium. The Bulldogs took two out of three in Ruston, La., earlier in the season, after the Spartans won the opener, with the final game getting wiped out by rain. That series featured a 14-inning affair that the home side eventually pulled out by the final score of 12-11 in five hours and four minutes. The Spartans have won four in a row over Tech at home, dating back to an 8-2 Bulldog victory on March 25, 2006.

Wade Simoneaux, the 2007 WAC Coach of the Year, is 159-203-1 in his seventh season.

LIVE STATS
Live stats for all San Jose State home games throughout the 2009 season, are available at SJSUSpartans.com courtesy of JumpTV, Inc. Just click on Live Stats under Live from the top menu bar on the front page. Fans can also access the live stats from Schedule/Results on the baseball page. Live stats are available for almost all of the Spartans’ road contests. Links can be found at SJSUSpartans.com.

AUDIO/VIDEO COVERAGE
Two of the four games this weekend can be heard locally in the South Bay on KSJS (90.5 FM) and on-line at http://www.ksjs.org. On Friday, April 10, the station will cover the second game, with Tim Lopez and Delaney Caldwell on the call. KSJS will also broadcast the nightcap of Saturday’s doubleheader, with air time approximate on both days. Assistant sports director Leonard Lithen and Justin Allegri will describe Saturday’s action. All four contests can also be heard in Louisiana, with Dave Nitz providing the commentary. An audio stream for the Friday games can be accessed at http://www.thepeach993.com, and for Saturday’s doubleheader at http://www.espn977.com. There will be no video coverage of this week’s series.

NEW WAC SCHEDULE
For the second year in a row, the Western Athletic Conference features a format of four-game weekend sets. However, there are two changes this year. Instead of a 32-game conference slate with eight four-game sets that required that every team play two league opponents eight times each, and the other four of them four times each, the WAC schedule in 2009 is just 24 games long. Each team will thus play the other six four times, with three opponents at home, and three on the road. In addition, though the doubleheader days remain, the second game of the twin bills will now be scheduled for seven innings. The lone exception is if the doubleheader opener is halted early due to the 10-run mercy rule, in which case the nightcap would become nine innings. The mercy rule will be in effect in the WAC for the second consecutive season.

WAC FOR STARTERS
San Jose State lost its Western Athletic Conference opener for the third year in a row when it fell to a 3-0 defeat at Hawai’i on Friday night, April 3. The Spartans went on to drop the series, three games to one. They had suffered a 3-1 home defeat to Sacramento State in their 2008 opener on March 14, 2008, but rallied to take that series, three games to one. In 2007, the Spartans lost game one of the WAC season, 14-8, at home to New Mexico State on March 23, and eventually dropped the set, two games to one. They won their 2006 WAC opener, 2-0 over Louisiana Tech, on March 23, 2006, and the series, two games to one.

Since joining the league for the 1997 season, San Jose State has gone 5-8 in WAC openers. The Spartans have an 8-5 series record to open WAC seasons. SJSU had won its WAC opener and its opening WAC series for two straight years before the 2007 defeat to New Mexico State, and the subsequent series loss. In 2005, the Spartans topped No. 7 Rice, 10-8, in the opener in San Jose, and went on to a rare three-game sweep of the Owls.

LAST TIME OUT: SPARTANS DROP FIRST SERIES OF 2009 AT UH
San Jose State lost three out of four games to open the conference slate in front of record crowds at Les Murakami Stadium, home of the Hawai’i Rainbows, last weekend.

After getting blanked for the first time all year, 3-0, in the opener on Friday night, April 3, the Spartans were unable to hold leads of 5-2 and 4-0 in a pair of narrow defeats around a 3-2 triumph in seven innings in the nightcap of a doubleheader on Saturday, April 4. Senior right-hander Ryan Shopshire started and earned the win in that one, going six-plus innings (3 H, 5 SO).

PROBABLE PITCHING ROTATION
Thurs.    David Berner (LHP)    Leads WAC in innings (56.0) and strikeouts (50)
Fri.    Max Peterson (LHP)    2-0, 2.25 ERA, 17 strikeouts over 12.0 innings vs. LTU in 2008
TBA    Ryan Shopshire (RHP)    Earned lone Spartan win at UH; 6.0 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 6 BB, 5 SO
TBA    Scott Sobczak (RHP)    Leads WAC in ERA (2.31); 2-0 in 4 career starts vs. LTU

FIRST WIN OVER RANKED FOE SINCE 2005
San Jose State’s 3-2 victory in seven innings at the University of Hawai’i in the second game of a doubleheader on Saturday, April 4, marked its first triumph over a ranked team since the 2005 campaign. Hawai’i was ranked No. 24 at the time by Rivals.com and Yahoo! Sports.

On March 20, 2005, the Spartans had produced a doubleheader sweep over then-seventh-ranked conference foe Rice University, to complete the sweep of a three-game weekend series.   

ONCE AGAIN, TOPS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Through games played on Tuesday, April 7, San Jose State has the best overall record among the nine NCAA Division I baseball programs in Northern California, at 20-8 (.714). Sacramento State (17-12, .586), Saint Mary’s (19-14, .576), California (15-14, .517),  Stanford (11-12, .478), USF (15-18, .455), Pacific (11-16, .407), Santa Clara (10-17, .370) and UC Davis (5-21, .192) all have marks that currently do not measure up to San Jose State’s performance. The Spartans also concluded 2007 with the best overall mark among the nine area schools, at 34-26.

WEEKEND WARRIORS
San Jose State suffered its first losses of the year on weekend days while in Hawaii. The Spartans headed into the four-game set with the Rainbows at 6-0 on Saturdays and 3-0 on Sundays, but split the Saturday doubleheader at Les Murakami Stadium, and dropped a 7-4 decision in the series finale on Sunday, April 5.

SAM PIRARO REACHES 700-WIN MILESTONE
San Jose State’s 6-1 victory over Dartmouth College inside Municipal Stadium on Thursday night, March 19, marked win No. 700 for 22nd-year Spartan head coach Sam Piraro. The winningest coach in program history, he now has a record of 705-528-6 in charge at his alma mater.

Piraro was named by the College Baseball Foundation and Diamond Sports to their National All-Star Lineup for the 2009 season’s fifth week of March 16-22 on Monday, March 23.

The 700-win milestone will be commemorated with a special on-the-field presentation prior to the 1:00 p.m. first pitch of game one of the doubleheader between the Spartans and defending national champion Fresno State Bulldogs on Saturday, April 25, at Municipal Stadium.

BEST IN THE WAC
Through games played on Sunday, April 5, the Spartans continue to lead the entire Western Athletic Conference in team ERA (3.83), with the only mark below 4.00, and are now tied for first in fielding percentage (.979) with Hawai’i. With the help of hitting .466 over a recent five-game homestand, they remain second behind New Mexico State (.372) in batting average (.335).

HOME SUCCESS
San Jose State is off to a 14-2 start at home in 2009, with the first of those triumphs at Blethen Field. The Spartans will play 33 of their 59 games during the regular season in San Jose, where they finished an impressive 21-6 a year ago, including 20-6 inside Municipal Stadium and 1-0 at Blethen Field. In Western Athletic Conference play, they went 12-4 at Muni, including a pair of four-game sweeps over Louisiana Tech and Nevada. The Spartans won 17 games at Muni in 2007, and 21 home contests in all, finishing 21-13 in San Jose and 17-11 at Muni. They have won at least 20 games in San Jose in each of the past four seasons, and are already closing in on that total for 2009. The Spartans have won their last eight home games in a row, tied with four others for the seventh-longest streak in the nation, according to WarrenNolan.com.