April 14, 2009

Kendall Rogers
Rivals.com College Baseball Editor

A few seasons ago, the conference struggled to get more than one or two teams in an NCAA regional, but the college baseball landscape on the West Coast has changed substantially. The Big West continues to gain respect and, yes, it is the premier league this season ? surpassing the historically superior Pacific-10 Conference.

Cal State Fullerton is in good shape to earn a top national seed and UC Irvine and Cal Poly are compiling strong resumes. UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara, meanwhile, are also making strong cases to be in the field of 64.

Ponder this thought: Before earning four bids each of the last two seasons, the Big West earned just two bids in 2006 and '05. This season five bids is a real possibility.

For a conference disrespected for many seasons, the tables have turned ? and it doesn't surprise the league's coaches.

"There has been so much parity in this league the past few seasons and I don't think it's surprising that the league has had so much success lately," Cal State Fullerton coach Dave Serrano said. "Especially this season, I felt like there would be consistency league-wide based on the players each team had coming back."

The Titans have one of the nation's better offenses with outfielder Josh Fellhauer leading the way. UC Irvine has a dominant weekend rotation with Danny Bibona and Christian Bergman. Cal Poly also has an impressive team with freshman second baseman Matt Jensen and others as the headliners. Even UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara, who sit on the NCAA bubble at the moment, have several premier players.

In the grand scheme of things, what exactly has been the key to the Big West turning into a power conference, especially this season?

There are a few reasons.

First, the Big West's success has much to do with recruiting. Sure, Fullerton and Long Beach State typically attract solid prospects, but now Irvine is in that mix every year and UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly and others are attracting good players.

Instead of automatically opting for a Pacific-10 institution, many players in Southern California look forward to making the Big West their college home. Even more important, though, is that many players in California see an opportunity at these programs and simply choose to stay near home.

"I really think the biggest key to our success as a league is the fact that teams are recruiting pretty well right now," UC Riverside coach Doug Smith said. "Each team in this conference is getting its fair share of talented players and that makes things good."

Second, many Big West programs are making a stronger commitment to fielding successful teams. That includes formulating strenuous schedules.

UC Irvine played in the Houston College Classic earlier this season, UC Riverside played in a very competitive tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., Cal State Fullerton has played the nation's toughest schedule, UC Santa Barbara played in the Dairy Queen Classic in Minneapolis, and Long Beach State typically plays one of the nation's most impressive schedules.

"I think people are putting together pretty good schedules right now," Smith said. "By the time we get to conference, we're somewhat road and battle tested. That gets us and every other team roaring pretty good going into conference play."

Serrano, though, points to a more obvious reason for the conference's successes the past few seasons ? coaching.

UC Irvine's Mike Gillespie is one of the nation's brightest baseball minds, Fullerton's Serrano has experienced a wealth of success at all his stops, Smith carried UC Riverside to the Big West crown in 2007 and is establishing some consistency, Rex Peters at UC Davis made a huge statement by guiding his program to a regional last season, Larry Lee of Cal Poly is a great teacher, and you can't argue with Mike Weathers' success at Long Beach State.

"One of the things that's so undervalued about the Big West are the coaches," Serrano said. "You're going up against well-coached teams every weekend. You can't just get away from good baseball in this league and be sloppy. If you do that, teams are going to just drive you crazy. There's consistency and toughness in the Big West."

Five possible bids and two national seeds for the Big West was a pipe dream three seasons ago.

Now it's the expectation.

MOUNTAIN WEST SURGE

While other conferences in the western half of the country have earned headlines the past few seasons for making steady progress, the Mountain West often has been omitted from that discussion for good reason.

The league historically has not been very good, but things changed in 2006 when TCU joined the conference. The Horned Frogs built a spectacular new facility and are located in Fort Worth, Texas, a fertile recruiting ground.

Every team saw the stakes raised and realized a stronger commitment was needed to compete against TCU and other teams nationally.

It took a couple of seasons, but this spring has been much different for the Mountain West.

"I've always felt that each school in this league has some sort of advantage or niche," said TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle, who once was coach at UNLV. "I've also felt that if teams continued or tried to play a tough non-conference schedule, we'd have an opportunity to be a two- or three-bid league each season."

Though the league would take three bids this season, four certainly is not out of the question and would provide a huge boost.

San Diego State is tied with New Mexico for the conference lead. The Aztecs are ranked No. 18 and are a lock to make an NCAA regional. The Lobos, meanwhile, were ranked earlier this season and with an RPI of 68, have work to do the rest of the season.

Then there's BYU and TCU.

The Cougars raised some eyebrows a few weekends ago by sweeping Western Carolina on the road and earning a higher RPI, but they now have an RPI of 48. That figure likely would get them in an NCAA regional if the season ended today, but the Cougars have little wiggle room the rest of the season.

The Horned Frogs, meanwhile, have an RPI of 8 and gained the conference a wealth of notoriety by taking two of three from Cal State Fullerton to begin the season.

"All of a sudden it's a perfect storm situation where everything is coming together," Schlossnagle said.

On top of the five bids the conference may receive, the league sits No. 6 in conference RPI. That puts them ahead of C-USA, the WCC, the Sun Belt and the SoCon.

"I'm one of those guys that thinks we should have one of the top six leagues every season," Schlossnagle said. "We're all surrounded by good recruiting bases and good areas for scheduling. If three teams get in, that's almost half the league. If four teams get in, well, that's even better."

Kendall Rogers is the college baseball editor for Rivals.com and Yahoo! Sports. He can be reached at rogersk@yahoo-inc.com.