W&J favorite to win PAC baseball title

The Presidents’ Athletic Conference released the results of its Preseason Baseball Coaches’ Poll and Washington & Jefferson was selected as the favorite to claim this year's baseball championship.

The poll collected votes from each of the nine head baseball coaches in the PAC. The Presidents and 11th year head coach Jeff Mountain totaled six of the nine available first-place votes and accumulated 77 of a maximum 81 total points.

Thomas More received the second-most votes in the poll and totaled 70 points along with one first-place vote. Saint Vincent finished third in the poll with 53 points and was followed by Thiel in fourth with 49 points and one first-place vote. Waynesburg was fifth with 47 points, followed by a sixth-place tie between Bethany (32) and 2012 conference champion Westminster (32, final first-place vote). Grove City (23) and Geneva (22) rounded out the poll.

“We appreciate the respect from the league’s coaches, but a preseason poll is merely a guess of how a long season will play out. The strength of the league, combined with the most difficult non-conference schedule we’ve faced during my tenure, will pose great challenges,” said Mountain.

W&J is coming off the best season in program history after breaking school records for victories (36) and conference wins (21), while earning a bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament for the third time in the last four years. The Presidents rose to as high as number 14 in the national polls and claimed an 8-0 victory over the College of Wooster at the NCAA Mideast Regional for their third NCAA tournament win in school history.

The 2013 baseball season gets underway on February 23. The PAC portion of the 2013 schedule begins on March 9 with the PAC Baseball Championship Tournament slated for May 9-11.