Baseball Bits

Here's a quick catchup on all the IU Baseball news of the last month:

Defend The Rock favorite Evan Crawford has been named to the Ping!Baseball Freshmen Team. (Second Team, Second Base). Congratulations Evan!

IU Baseball adds Jeff Caldwell (1b, FL), to the roster for the fall of 2007. Stats for this past season: .400AVG/.495OBP/.716SLG/6HR/102B/35RBI (95 AB).

IU Players Drafted: Jon Fixler (Astros, 19th Round). The Hoosiers lost a couple signees in Brock Huntzinger (Red Sox, 3rd Round) and Kyle Leindecker (Indians, 25th Round)

More than a dozen Hoosiers are playing summer ball. IUHoosiers will have a continuing series covering their progress. The latest brings good news on Josh Pegley, more stellar play from Evan Crawford, and fine pitching from Joe Vicini and Eric Arnett.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

Lost in the tragic death of Coach Hep was the fact that on the very same day IU got to work on new projects to enhance facilities on campus.

Quick run down:

1. Memorial Stadium North End Zone Project: Additional offices and strength and conditioning facility. And oh yeah "The Hall of Champions". One day Defend The Rock's boy Evan Crawford will be in there.

2. Basketball Development Center: Alternative practice site, strength and conditioning facility, offices and meeting rooms.

3. New stadiums for the baseball and softball teams north of Mellencamp Pavilion. This is a biggie as any former or current IU baseball fan knows the stadium is barely above little league standards.

Full article w/ quotes from IU officials, coaches, and players here.

Overall it seems like at the very least IU's players will be that much more conditioned and strong once all these upgrades are complete...

Assembly Hall To Be....Disassembled

Well, they've gone and done it, the Board of Trustees has agreed to replace Assembly Hall. My favorite parts of this story are right at the beginning, namely "at some point in the future" and "IU currently lacks the funding to construct it."

I've always been a bit cynical when it comes to Universities, especially public ones, financing massive new sports complexes that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I'd rather see that $ going to the academic/research fields but at this point universities make so much money off of their athletics programs that in some ways you have to fund athletics to be able to fund everything else.

Assembly Hall definitely isn't the best arena in the collegiate world, and boy oh boy are there some terrible seats/viewing angles, but it doesn't need to be replaced ASAP. So I guess I can go along with this agreement that the trustees have come come to: Yeah, replace Assembly Hall, but don't make it the #1 priority at IU.