6 replies to this topic

[ORUalum]

Southern Utah University to end baseball program

(excerpt)
Beazer added in a phone interview: “It wasn’t about a budget deficit, as much as it was toward putting our limited resources into a sport that was in a viable conference. Baseball didn’t have that for us.”

Beazer said that after the Western Athletic Conference declined to add SUU and the Great West didn’t have enough members to qualify for a postseason bid, the school had approached the Summit League to stay on as a member only for baseball, but that was turned down mainly due to travel costs.
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it will be interesting to see if the Summit takes the same approach to ORU Men's Soccer.

[TrueBlue82]

With SUU and ORU both leaving the conference, there are no warm-weather early-Spring home locations left. While the Summit travel costs will decline next year, the number of cancelled games will increase dramatically. But, for a conference that really doesn't care about baseball, that's probably no big deal.

[Former SID]

TrueBlue82, on 14 January 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

With SUU and ORU both leaving the conference, there are no warm-weather early-Spring home locations left. While the Summit travel costs will decline next year, the number of cancelled games will increase dramatically. But, for a conference that really doesn't care about baseball, that's probably no big deal.

The Future winner of Summit League Tournaments will automatically be in the running for the 64th seed at Regionals...

[ORUJason]

Still, it stinks for SUU to have to end their program. Also, how many baseball teams will the Summit League have left once we and SUU leave? Probably barely enough to hold on to an auto bid.

[Hammersmith]

ORUJason, on 14 January 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

Still, it stinks for SUU to have to end their program. Also, how many baseball teams will the Summit League have left once we and SUU leave? Probably barely enough to hold on to an auto bid.

Yep, 6. NDSU, SDSU, IPFW, Oak, WIU & UNO.

[drclean1]

suu baseball is a good program

[Old Titan]

Southern Utah holds the distinction of being the last conference team to beat an ORU squad in the conference tournament: they had a guy throw a complete-game 6-1 gem in the second-round winner's bracket game at Johnson Stadium back in 2000, and ORU had to fight back through the loser's bracket to defeat SUU in the finals, 8-4. I remember the night we lost was really hot and humid, and the dude was just nails - we couldn't do a thing against him.

ORU has won 36 straight Mid-Con/Summit League conference tournament games since that loss, over 11 seasons - an amazing run...