{"id":2905,"date":"2016-02-11T18:51:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T02:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=2905"},"modified":"2016-02-11T18:51:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T02:51:48","slug":"baseball-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/baseball-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball has begun!"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre>By: Jamal Smith \r\nSports Editor<\/pre>\n<p>Baseball season is officially here.<\/p>\n<p>With the new season comes high expectations placed upon the WOU men\u2019s baseball team. On Thursday, Jan. 28 the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) Baseball Coaches Preseason Poll projected the Wolves to finish in first place in the GNAC with the best chance of claiming the 2016 regular season title.<\/p>\n<p>The high expectations for the new season can be traced to last season\u2019s success. In 2015, Western finished the season with a 29-24 overall record and a GNAC record of 22-11, but most importantly, the Wolves came out victorious in the GNAC Baseball Conference Tournament and ended a 13 year conference title drought.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice to get some recognition early in the season, but our guys know its preseason and its meaning less,\u201d said head coach Kellen Walker. \u201c[The team] understand the expectations when they sign up for it and that\u2019s why they come here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur players want an opportunity to win the conference title and compete for a regional and hope to have an opportunity to get back to the College World Series,\u201d added Walker.<\/p>\n<p>Western began the new season in whirlwind fashion, playing their first five games in four days, starting on Thursday, Feb. 4 and finishing on Sunday. Feb. 7. The first four games were against Azusa Pacific University in which the Wolves split the matchup 2-2 (W 3-1, W 8-4, L 1-2, L 6-7).<\/p>\n<p>Then on Sunday, thanks to a top of the ninth sacrifice fly from senior first baseman Nathan Etheridge, Western edged California State University of Dominguez Hills 7-6.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe used the majority of our roster which is a credit to the depth of our team,\u201d said Walker. \u201c[The game] was a good early season test for us to go on the road and play five games in four days against two really quality teams and come back over five-hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Wolves\u2019 next game is on Saturday, Feb. 13 against the California State University of East Bay in Hayward, Calif. The first home game is on Saturday, March 12 against Saint Martin\u2019s University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baseball season is officially here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":2952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}