Tuesday, March 26, 2019

PORTLAND, Ore. - GNAC Insider returned Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. (PDT) with three big guests as the month of March winds to a close.

Leading off the program was Western Washington men's golf senior Michael Butler. The Vikings are the hottest team in the conference, winning five of their seven tournaments thus far on the 2018-19 campaign. 

Butler ranks third in the GNAC in scoring average at a 72.7 clip and is fresh off a fourth-place finish individually at the NDNU Argonaut Invitational.

Ranked No. 6 nationally, WWU will return to the course on Monday in Turlock, Calif. at the Hanny Stanislaus Invitational. The tournament will mark its penultimate regular-season event ahead of next month's GNAC Championships.

Also joining the show was Aaron Sutton, the head baseball coach at Montana State Billings. Sutton is in his third season at the helm in Billings, arriving at MSUB after five years at Treasure Valley Community College. 

It has been quite the start to conference play for the Yellowjackets, winners of seven straight games that have all been played outside of Billings. The team has been led by junior Daniel Cipriano, who currently tops the team in batting average (.429), RBIs (17) and slugging percentage (.794).

Montana State Billings will be back in action for a four-game series at Concordia this weekend. Sutton joined the program to preview the week ahead and review some of his team's successes thus far. 

Tuesday's show was rounded out by a visit from Concordia softball pitcher/utility player Mckenzie Smith. Smith, the conference's reigning Pitcher of the Week, recently helped lead the Cavaliers to sweeps away from home of Saint Martin's and first-place Central Washington. The senior ranks second on CU in both batting average (.324) and ERA (3.79) as the second month of the season comes to an end.