Thursday, February 26, 2015

PORTLAND, Ore. – Montana State Billings' Luke Reinschmidt was named the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Associations National Player of the Week Wednesday.

Reinschmidt becomes just the second player in GNAC history to record this honor, joining former Western Oregon and D2baseballnews.com National Pitcher of the Year, Grady Wood.

In eight games last week the centerfielder hit .364 with three doubles, one triple and four home runs in 12 hits. Reinschmidt played a part in almost a quarter of the 57 runs scored by MSUB in series against Azusa Pacific, Dixie State and Minot State.

"This is a great honor for Luke and our program," MSUB head coach Rob Bishop said. "He deserves this honor with the week that he put together on the road."

The Yellowjacket junior won GNAC Player of the Week and the NCBWA West Region Player of the Week honors before his national selection.

Reinschmidt and the Yellowjackets top-ranked offense will start conference play this weekend, facing the GNAC’s best pitching team in Central Washington.

The Wildcats are holding batters to a .203 average in their eight games played so far while striking out a whopping 9.74 batters each contest.

The Yellowjackets counter this with a GNAC-best .320 batting average while leading the conference in every major hitting category including slugging percentage, on-base percentage, hits, runs scored and home runs.

In a rematch of the opening game of the 2014 GNAC tournament, Saint Martin’s hosts Western Oregon in its first conference series of the year.

The Saints are coming off their first sweep of the year, against Concordia, while the Wolves recently took two games from Lewis-Clark State, the second-ranked team in the NAIA.

Northwest Nazarene has another week before it begins conference play. The Crusaders are preparing for next seasons conference schedule in the meantime by visiting 2016 GNAC foe, Concordia, Friday and Saturday.

Notes:

• Montana State Billings' Brady Muller moved into the top 10 in the GNAC all-time in strikeouts after tying his career-high with 11 last week against Minot State. He currently stands at 172. Saint Martin’s Chandler Tracy also moved into the top 10 all-time in runs scored with 117.

• Western Oregon’s Matt Taylor recorded his second and third three-RBI games of the season last week and is now tied for the conference lead in that category. In the Wolves two wins over Lewis-Clark State, Taylor drove in six runs on seven hits with two doubles.
   
• Saint Martin's played the longest game in GNAC history last weekend. The Saints beat incoming GNAC member Concordia 8-6 in 15 innings after Travis Shaw hit the go-ahead single into left field, scoring Alec Hagerman. Tracy hit a triple later in the inning, scoring Shaw, for another insurance run. The longest game prior to this was played in 2012 when MSUB beat NNU 6-5 in 14 innings.
   
• Northwest Nazarene has won five of its last seven games. In that span, the Crusaders are averaging nearly six runs a game while allowing their opponents only 2.4.
   
• NNU's Jake Reppert notched his second win of the season in a 9-2 win over Academy of Art Saturday. In his three starts this season the senior has pitched at least six innings while striking out 16 batters and allowing just 3 runs.

• The Yellowjackets Reinschmidt was named the GNAC Player of the Week after hitting four home runs and 13 RBI’s last week. Western Oregon starter Michael Bennett was selected Pitcher of the Week after shutting out Lewis-Clark State. In a little over five innings of work, Bennett struck out five while allowing only four hits.