Southern Collegiate
Athletic Conference
Sports Release

Austin College ● Birmingham-Southern ● Centre ● Colorado College ● DePauw ● Hendrix
Millsaps ● Oglethorpe ● Rhodes ● Sewanee ● Southwestern ● Trinity

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2008
Contact: Dwayne Hanberry, SCAC Interim Commissioner

OWEN OF MILLSAPS; TSCHANTZ OF DEPAUW
HEADLINE 2008 ALL-SCAC BASEBALL TEAM

SUWANEE, Ga. – Hunter Owen of Millsaps College was named the league’s Offensive Player-of-the-Year for the second consecutive season and John Tschantz of DePauw University was selected the league’s Pitcher-of-the-Year in exclusive 2008 all-Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) voting by the conference’s head coaches. In that same balloting, Sam Hill of Birmingham-Southern was selected as the conference’s Freshman-of-the-Year and Trinity University head coach Tim Scannell was named the SCAC Coach-of-the-Year.

Owen, a junior outfielder from Jackson, Miss., hit .388 this season (eighth in the SCAC) and slugged a league-best .756. He led the SCAC in home runs (16 – a single-season school record and the third highest single-season total in league history), runs scored (61), total bases (121), walks (45) and on-base percentage (.546) and finished in the top four in the league in runs batted in (50 – tied for fourth) and stolen bases (23 – third). At the 2008 Baseball Championships, Owen tied a SCAC tournament record with 12 hits, and finished with a .600 batting average with two doubles, three home runs, seven RBI and 11 runs scored. A consensus all-America selection last season as well as both the ABCA/Rawlings and NCBWA South Region Player-of-the-Year, Owen is the eighth different player from Millsaps to win the league’s Offensive Player-of-the-Year. It is the tenth overall OPOTY award for a Millsaps player as Garner Wetzel (2005, 2006) and Owen (2007, 2008) both won the award twice.

Tschantz, a senior right-hander from Wilmette, Ill., is the first DePauw player to win one of the league’s Player-of-the-Year awards since the Tigers joined the SCAC prior to the 1999 season. Tschantz finished the season with an ERA of 2.45 (third in the SCAC) in 80.2 innings of work and allowed opponents to hit just .235 (also third in the SCAC). He won eight games (second in the SCAC in wins) against just three losses and in SCAC games, posted the league’s best ERA at 0.96 with a perfect 4-0 record. Tschantz was the winning pitcher in DePauw’s only victory at the 2008 Baseball Championships, posting a complete-game, seven-hit victory over Southwestern – striking out 10 batters over nine innings on the bump.

Hill, a first-year catcher from Mobile, Ala., hit .396 in his inaugural season with the Panthers (fifth in the SCAC) and finished in the top 10 in the league in slugging percentage (.612 – sixth), on-base percentage (.482 – eighth), hits (55 – tied for 10th) and doubles (15 – tied for seventh). He also added five home runs, 40 runs driven in and 85 total bases – all team-high totals. Hill had 14 multi-hit games and 11 multi-RBI games and drove in at least one run in 27 of his team’s 40 contests.

Trinity head coach Tim Scannell, in his 10th season as the Tigers’ skipper, was named the SCAC Coach-of-the-Year after leading his squad to the 2008 conference tournament title – the team’s fifth overall SCAC baseball championship. All but one of those titles have come during Scannell’s tenure in San Antonio. Scannell is a four-time SCAC COTY (1999, 2004, 2006, 2008)
and has tied or set the school record for wins in a season on four occasions. Heading into this season, Trinity had posted the 11th-best winning percentage of all Division III baseball programs this decade. Scannell has led the baseball program to eight 30-plus win seasons in his first 10 years, including this year’s squad which enters NCAA West Region play with a record of 32-13.

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