Willamette's now 5-1 (3 of 3 at Occidental and 2 of 3 at Menlo College).  Occidental is projected to be pretty weak but Menlo's supposed to have a fairly good team.  Willamette's defense looked solid and their pitching stood up well.   I saw some of the games at Occidental and Menlo and was really impressed and a bit surprised by the quality of play (particularly with Willamette and Menlo).   Being new to D-III baseball, I didn't know what to expect.  Hopefully Willamette can keep it up (or a reasonable approximation...) during conference play.

OK, this has been bugging me, so as a parent of a freshman, I have to ask this - is it a pretty rare situation when a freshman position player gets much playing time at this point in the season?   All you baseball parents out there know where I coming from!

I watched the three Willamette vs. Occidental games over this past weekend (my son is a freshman on the Willamette), and Willamette showed some surprisingly (to me at least) good pitching in games 1 and 2.   I think both games were 1-hitters.  Occidental had a good chance at winning game 3 but  a 3-run home run late in the game basically put it out of reach for Occidental.

Willamette lost quite a few seniors and their roster this year includes a lot of freshmen and sophomores.  For that reason, it's possible that their ranking (6th.) in the North West Conference is lower than it ought to be.  At least, I hope that turns out to be the case.

By the way, Occidental needs more bleachers!

Does anyone know where the Northwest Conference typically ranks nationally?  Are any such rankings even done for DIII baseball?  With two teams in the top 30 pre-season rankings and, as far as I can tell, at least a few other competitive teams in the conference, I'd think (hope) the NWC would rank at least in the top half.

(New to DIII sports and a lot poorer than I was this time last year)