FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 1, 2008
Contact:  Dwayne Hanberry, SCAC Interim Commissioner

RHODES COLLEGE SELECTED TO WIN 2008 SCAC BASEBALL TITLE

SUWANEE, Ga. – Based on voting by the head coaches in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), Rhodes College is the heavy favorite to win the 2008 conference baseball championship. Coach Jeff Cleanthes' Lynx received eight of the 11 coaches’ first-place votes followed by Millsaps College with two votes and Southwestern University with the remaining first-place vote.

Winners of the SCAC Eastern Division, Rhodes posted its highest win total in program history with a 36-10 finish in 2007 and spent six weeks ranked in the top 30, reaching a high ranking of 25th. In this season's inaugural National Coaches Baseball Writers Association/D3baseball.com preseason Division III poll, the Lynx received the third-most votes of any school outside of the top 25. Millsaps also received votes in the preseason poll.

As for the division races, Rhodes received all six first-place votes and is the unanimous pick in the East, while Trinity University is the coaches' favorite in the West.

Three schools received first-place votes in the polling among the West coaches. Trinity received three first-place votes while Millsaps and Southwestern received one first-place vote each.

Birmingham-Southern College makes its debut this season in the SCAC. The Panthers, who are in their first season as a provisional member of Division III, return to the diamond after not fielding a team in 2007. Coach Jan Weisberg was named BSC head coach in 2006 after spending one season as the head coach at Transylvania University.

Individually, the SCAC returns three ABCA All-Americans in seniors Daniel Vanaman and Robert Flanagan of Rhodes and Hunter Owen of Millsaps. The three were also named D3baseball.com preseason All-Americans entering the 2008 campaign.

Last season Vanaman became the first player in SCAC history to lead the league in batting average in consecutive years and Owen was the National College Baseball Writers Association South Region Player-of-the-Year. Flanagan and Owen are the reigning SCAC Pitcher and Player-of-the-Year, respectively.

After the successful debut of the SCAC Divisional Tournament - where the top four teams from each division square off against each other in a best-of-three series - the event returns to Millington USA Field in Memphis, Tennessee for an encore performance in 2008. Only a Rhodes victory over Trinity in three games kept the West from sweeping last year's event. Austin College, Millsaps and Southwestern University each won their best-of-three series and, along with Rhodes, advanced to the SCAC Baseball Championships in Georgetown, Texas the following weekend.

At the 2007 Baseball Championships, Austin College swept through the tournament undefeated, culminating with a come-from-behind, 9-7, victory over Millsaps in the title game that earned the school a championship in its first year as a member of the conference. The victory marked the culmination of an incredible turnaround for the program, just four years removed from a 2-36 record. 

Seeded seventh at the NCAA West Regional, Austin College was eliminated in two games with losses to Pacific Lutheran and to Pomona-Pitzer in extra-innings.