Texas State notebook: Bobcat athletic department named tops in Sun Belt Conference

Keff Ciardello
·3 min read
After leading the nation in saves with 17, Texas State pitcher Tristan Stivors was named a first-team All-American this week. He has 72 strikeouts in 52 innings with a 2.43 ERA.
After leading the nation in saves with 17, Texas State pitcher Tristan Stivors was named a first-team All-American this week. He has 72 strikeouts in 52 innings with a 2.43 ERA.
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SAN MARCOS — The Sun Belt Conference awarded the Texas State department of athletics the 2021-22 Vic Bubas Cup, which goes to the top performing department in the league.

A point system based on wins across all sports put the Bobcats at 123, just enough to edge out South Alabama’s 122. It is the second Bubas Cup for Texas State; the first was in 2018-19.

"On behalf of our entire athletic department, I am incredibly proud and grateful of the hard work and dedication put in by our student-athletes and coaches this year," Texas State athletic director Don Coryell said in a statement released by the school. "To win the Vic Bubas Cup and represent all it stands for is an honor for Texas State, the campus community and Bobcat nation. We made this a goal of ours back in August, and with the help of our championships earned and the fight by all Bobcats, we achieved the level of being the Sun Belt's best. We are fired up to bring the Bubas Cup back home to San Marcos.”

More: Texas State notebook: Bobcats win second Sun Belt baseball title in three full seasons

In his first year as AD, Coryell oversaw a department that had men’s basketball and baseball win the regular season conference championships, with volleyball and men’s and women’s indoor track and field finishing second. Softball finished third in the regular-season standings and made it to the conference tournament championship game before losing to Louisiana 7-1.

The Vic Bubas Cup, named after the Sun Belt’s first commissioner, has been awarded to just three different programs in the past eight years — Texas State, South Alabama and Arkansas State. South Alabama won four consecutively, from 2015 to 2018, and again in 2021. Arkansas State, which finished fourth this year with 104.5 points, won in 2020.

Baseball: Ahead of the team's Stanford Regional matchup this weekend, Bobcat seniors Tristan Stivors and Dalton Shuffield were named Collegiate Baseball All-Americans this week.

Stivors became the first Bobcat ever to be named to the All-American first team, while Shuffield took home second-team honors. It is the third time two Bobcats have been named to the All-American team, along with Paul Goldschmidt and Kane Holbrooks in 2009 and Casey Kalenkosy and Carson Smith in 2011.

More: Texas State notebook: Bobcats continue to work the transfer portal to grow their roster

Also a first team all-Sun Belt selection, Stivors (7-1) leads the nation in saves with 17, the most in a season by a Texas State pitcher. He has 72 strikeouts in 52 innings with a 2.43 ERA. Shuffield was named Sun Belt Player of the Year after finishing the regular season as the conference leader in batting average, hits, runs, doubles and triples.

As the No. 2 seed in the Stanford Regional, the Bobcats (45-12) will face UC Santa Barbara (43-12) on Friday night.

Track and field: Texas State’s Alyssa Wilson is the only athlete this season to qualify for the women’s discus, hammer throw and shot put in the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Championships. She was among the top 12 to advance to Eugene, Ore., for the championships, which will take place Wednesday through June 11. A UCLA graduate transfer, it will be Wilson’s fourth appearance at the meet. The Texas State men’s 4x100 relay team of Bervensky Pierre, Dominick Yancy, Daniel Harrold and Aston Callahan also qualified.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Sun Belt Conference names Texas State as best athletics department