Though not quite as dramatic as pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training, we're now in the pre-season training portion of the fall college sports calendar. That's good, because all that World Cup knowledge I've acquired in the past month was starting to scare me. We're less than three months away from a pre-season hockey game and less than four months away from the annual basketball intra-squad scrimmage.
“I think winning the CAA [Colonial Athletic Association] is the minimum accomplishment this season,” senior captain and outside hitter Caitlin Tittl of the volleyball team said. “There are no excuses this year, we have to do it.”
Men’s hockey head coach Greg Cronin released the team’s schedule for the 2010-11 season last week. For the second time in three years, the team will face cross-town rival Boston College (BC) in the Huskies' home opener Oct. 9.
The last time this happened, Oct. 18, 2008, BC was the reigning national college hockey champion and ranked No. 1 overall for the new season. The Huskies prevailed in that game, getting the final goal from forward Joe Vitale in the third period to win 4-3. NU went 25-12-4 that season and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1994.
Last year, the Northeastern men's basketball team had a lot to be thankful for. It won 20 games, finished as one of the best teams in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA), and made some noise in the postseason by nearly defeating perennial power Connecticut in the opening game of the National Invitational Tournament.
But the attitude around the program has changed, largely because of its new fan section: The N-Zone.
Northeastern is serious about the "student" in student-athlete.
Four NU athletic programs were publicly recognized by the NCAA for their multiyear academic progress rate (APR), which examines the eligibility, retention rate and graduation rate of each NCAA team's student-athletes, and provides a measure of each team's academic performance. Teams that score between a 978 and a perfect score of 1,000 are publicly recognized. The football, men's cross country, women's hockey and women's rowing programs all were all recognized by the NCAA in the latest APR report.
As the ball rocketed off junior Mike Bivas’ bat and middler Adam Morgan sprinted for home plate, 20 black jerseys mobbed the field in celebration of a national championship.
The men’s hockey team will welcome 10 new freshmen to the roster. Five forwards, four defensemen and one goaltender make up the new class of Huskies who will take to the ice in the fall.
The class ties last year’s mark as the biggest incoming class for head coach Greg Cronin.
The breeze still stirs the trees, the gravel parking lot still crunches when cars enter and leave, but the relative peace of Parsons Field has been interrupted of late by bulldozers and other heavy machinery. Crews have been ripping up the old (and I mean old) artificial turf before laying down a new surface in time for the fall season.
In the last month of the ill-fated 2010 baseball season, sophomore first baseman Matt Miller consistently produced for the baseball team, going 17-55 (.309), scoring 13 runs and driving in six runs. Miller led the team with a .320 batting average this season, and scored 36 runs while driving in 18. His efforts have earned him Huntington News Player of the Week honors.
It's no question the biggest news surrounding Northeastern sports in the past year was the elimination of the football program in November. Now that the program is done, the Athletic Department needs to make some changes to programs that still exist.
Last fall in the press...
The baseball team played its final three games of what can be considered one of the least successful seasons of head coach Neil McPhee’s 25-year tenure, perhaps even in the program’s 89 years. Head coach Neil McPhee called the season “extremely frustrating, and very surprising.”
The baseball team snapped a six-game losing streak after taking two games from conference foe Old Dominion at Friedman Diamond this weekend. The Huskies then dropped an 8-3 contest at Maine yesterday, bringing the team's record to 11-26 on the season, and 4-14 in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). The squad is last out of 11 teams in the conference and is out of playoff contention.
