Texas State notebook: No. 11 Bobcats finally set to open Sun Belt baseball tournament
SAN MARCOS — Texas State's baseball team was set to make its Sun Belt Tournament debut Wednesday night in Montgomery, Ala., but bad weather forced all four scheduled games to be postponed.
And with more rain in the Thursday forecast, Sun Belt officials announced Wednesday night that the tournament would shift from a double-elimination format to a single elimination, with games resuming Friday.
The 11th-ranked Bobcats (44-11, 26-4 Sun Belt) won the regular-season championship and are the top seed in the conference tournament. Their game against 10th-seeded Louisiana-Monroe (20-34-1) was rescheduled for Friday night. Texas State swept Monroe in a three-game series in Louisiana earlier this month.
Earlier this week, the Sun Belt announced its season accolades, with the Bobcats earning the bulk of the awards. Head coach Steven Trout was named coach of the year, and shortstop Dalton Shuffield was the player of the year. Shuffield also earned all-conference first-team honors with four other Bobcats — pitchers Triston Stivors, Levi Wells and Zeke Wood, and third baseman Justin Thompson. Outfielders John Wuthrich and Jose Gonzalez earned second-team honors.
In his third season in charge of the Bobcats, Trout oversaw a team that went from 21-36 last year to setting a program record with 44 wins, including a 15-0 record in conference road games. He's the third Texas State baseball coach to earn coach of the year honors, after Howard Bushong in 1996 and Ty Harrington in 2009, 2011 and 2019.
Shuffield, a senior from San Antonio, became the first Bobcat to be named player of the year since Paul Goldschmidt in 2009. Shuffield led the Sun Belt with a .393 batting average, 84 hits, 74 runs scored, 20 doubles and five triples. He was named Sun Belt player of the week four times.
Stivors (6-1) leads the nation with 17 saves and has 68 strikeouts in 49 innings and a 2.57 ERA. Woods (6-1) went 4-0 against Sun Belt opponents and recorded double-digit strikeouts four times. Wells (7-1) went 5-1 in the Sun Belt with 72 strikeouts in 78 innings and a 2.88 ERA.
Thompson posted a .335 average, scoring 50 runs. Wuthrich led the team with 14 homers. Gonzalez finished with a .370 average and 10 home runs.
Football: Two more pledges from transfers give the Bobcats 28 new players for the 2022 recruiting class, 25 of whom are transfers. Louisiana Tech defensive linemen Levi Bell and Ben Bell, brothers out of Cedar Park High School, announced on Twitter that they had pledged to the Bobcats.
Levi Bell spent two seasons with the Bulldogs in 2020 and 2021 after starting his collegiate career at the College of Idaho in 2018 and then Tyler Junior College in 2019. In 11 games at Louisiana Tech, he recorded 27 tackles, 7½ for losses, and 4½ sacks. With two years left to play, he reported an offer from Sam Houston State and visited Virginia and SMU this spring.
Ben Bell was named to Conference USA's all-freshman team in 2020 after appearing in three games. In 10 games in 2021, he recorded 27 tackles, six for losses, and 3½ sacks.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: No. 11 Texas State opens rescheduled Sun Belt tourney against Monroe
