Pepperdine coach Steve Rodriguez has a big opportunity this weekend.

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM FEBRUARY.

Funny how things change. Okay, not funny “ha-ha” just funny-peculiar, ya’ know?

Things sure are different from the old days of college baseball. And by that I mean, for example, in 2001 Stanford and Cal Poly started the season with a January 21st game at Baggett Stadium for its grand opening. But now, we’re in the common start date era of our sport. So instead of a full month and a half of Division I action, there were only two weekends in the month of February. Still, a lot of early conclusions could be drawn already from the first 10 days (and change) of the 2010 season.

Here are eight quick-hit things we learned from February…

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1- That February Still Counts:
Depending on your lot in life, securing early-season wins in college baseball is still vastly important. So, for instance, if you’re New Mexico, those wins over Texas are going to be huge anchoring points for their argument to get an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament. In fact, who knows, maybe they’ll be UNM’s argument for getting a No. 1 seeding as well.

However, if you’re Texas, you can always blow off the opening weekend as a blip on the screen and they will have plenty of opportunities to make up ground. But then again, the other side of the coin says, what if the Longhorns had also lost the home series in weekend No. 2 vs. Stanford? The Longhorns could’ve really been behind the eight-ball, especially by doing so at home both weekends.

Either way, some of the early season wins for the mid-majors are vital. Because when it gets down to the last few teams being considered for selection into the NCAA tournament, all of those teams have proven that they can be beaten. The separating factor is the kind of teams they have proven they can beat.

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2- There Is No Dominant Team.
When we saw four of the top five teams in the rankings lose to unranked teams in the opening weekend of the season, that sent a huge message that this was – as suspected – going to be a wide-open season.

A quick look at the top of the pre-season rankings has shown plenty of achilles heels.

No. 1 Texas.
Just like last year, suspect hItting continues to plague the burnt orange. After eight games, they’re hitting a boney-armed .259.

No. 2 LSU.
The Tigers without Anthony Ranaudo? Hmmm… not a good recipe, even with all the prep All American talent on the squad. They need the big bull roarer in the ace position.

No. 3 Virginia.
Probably th emost complete team so far, but some shakiness beyond Hultzen on Fridays. For example, Robert Morey’s five-walk, seven-hit performance at ECU in game two is a concern.

No. 4 Cal State Fullerton.
The most red flags of all the top teams. The Titans seem to be playing tight as a vise. Daniel Renken hasn’t been effective on Fridays and Coach Serrano got shelved for three games for (allegedly) bumping an ump.

No. 5 Rice.
Got off to an 0-4 start after getting worked over at Stanford the opening weekend. Things have improved since, as some lock-down pitching has peppered their four-game win streak.

Teams like Arizona State, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Florida are a combined 27-2, but have yet to play anyone decent on the weekend. That will change soon, so stay tuned.

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3- There Is No Dominant Star.
Doesn’t look like we’re going to see another Steven Strasburg emerge this year… which is no surprise. He was a once-in-a-decade kind of star. But also, some stud players have been either M.I.A. (Ranaudo, ASU’s Josh Spence) or unspectacular (East Carolina’s Kyle Roller, Stanford’s Brett Mooneyham, Florida’s Preston Tucker, Vandy’s Sonny Gray, UCI’s Daniel Bibona, ASU’s Kole Calhoun), while others have been good (Ole Miss’ Drew Pomeranz, Texas’ Taylor Jungmann), but their teams have been up and down.

Either way, there isn’t a dominant force on offense or defense that will be stratospheres above the rest. In addition to Pomeranz and Jungmann, keep an eye on Virginia’s Danny Hultzen, Fresno State’s Jordan Ribero and TCU’s Jason Coats. They could all have legendary seasons.

Oh, and if you want an off-the-radar star to watch out for… try UT-Arlington’s Michael Choice, who is already exuding stud status on the diamond. Also, Middle Tennessee fans have to love that Justin Miller has outshone the much-celebrated Bryce Brentz.

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4- The Big West Is Hurting.
You know how I said in the pre-season list of things I look forward to this year, I mentioned that there are always at least three Top 25 teams that crap out and fall into the abyss? Well, it’s shocking to see that two of the candidates we could be looking at (I said “could” people) are Fullerton and Irvine. Lots of problems on both sides so far. I don’t think anybody saw this coming. Both Fullerton AND Irvine are struggling. Get this, the Titans are hitting a Big West-worst .228 and the ‘Eaters are pitching at a Big West-worst 6.75.

Elsewhere, Cal Poly got out of the blocks slowly by dropping a series at home to USC and Long Beach State joins them below the Mendoza Line at 3-4. Looking for an impressive team in the Big West? Try UC Riverside at 6-2, everyone else is near .500 or worse.

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5- The Pac 10 Is Back.
The Pac 10 was a weak-kitten conference last year, sending just three teams to the NCAAs. But I have to say, Stanford coach Mark Marquess is Nostradamus. He told me last year that the 2010 would be a rebound year with all the youthful pitching coming back to campus. He was right. The opening weekend saw the Pac go 25-4 in non-confernce games, including wins over Fullerton (by Oregon), Rice (by Stanford), Cal Poly (by USC) and Hawaii (by Oregon State).

Currently, there are four teams listed in the rankings, and that doesn’t include what I saw as being a very good Oregon team, unbeaten Washington State and a 6-1 Cal team that will host No. 15 Arkansas this weekend. Stay tuned.

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6- The Sun Belt Is The “It” Mid-Major Conference… so far.
Going into Wednesday night six of the SBC teams were unbeaten or had just a single loss on the early season. The most surprising of those is the two Natural State teams, Arkansas-Little Rock and Arkansas State, who are 7-1 and 6-1 respectively. Not bad. Of those non-unbeaten and non-one-loss teams, Florida Atlantic is 3-3 with a tough schedule (Cincy, Missouri, Boston College and Auburn) and Louisiana-Monroe may be 2-3, but they opened the season with a win at Ole Miss.

Oh, and lets all keep an eye on Florida International, who is 7-0 and fresh off an impressive series sweep of Oral Roberts. The Panthers will now take on Arizona State, Oregon State, UC Riverside and Cal Poly this weekend in Arizona.

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7- Upsets Abound And We Should Be Aware Of Them.
As touched on above, when June rolls around, lets hope the NCAA Selection Committee remembers wins such as…

- New Mexico over Texas, twice.
- Ball State over Arkansas
- Hawaii over Oregon State
- Louisiana-Monroe over Ole Miss
- Pepperdine over Cal State Fullerton
- Northwestern State over Southern Miss
- Indiana over San Diego
- Lamar over Rice
- Stephen F. Austin over Texas A&M
- Xavier over Georgia Tech
- Manhattan over Miami
- Maine over North Carolina
- LeMoyne over Southern Miss
- Western Kentucky over Baylor and Texas A&M

And I don’t mean to say we should remember these upsets because the teams deserve an NCAA bid simply for winning some of these games, but lets hope the selection committee remembers them when they are trying to decide between extending a bid to either a 9th place Big 12 or SEC team or a regular season champion of a mid-major who got dragged down by their weak conference mates. These no-money conference teams have proven they can play with the BCS conference teams on their home fields and should be given the benefit of the doubt.

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8- It Seems We Still Haven’t Learned Anything.
Sure, we’ve still over-hyped some early wins and have overrated some early losses. It’s just now March. Beating a bad team with a good reputation is not a big deal. Every year we express surprise that some of the traditional “little guys” can really play and some of the traditional power teams are just not that good. Take what was written in No. 7 with a grain of salt. Have to throw a caution sign up here because we cannot spend half of our time saying that Irvine isn’t any good this year, then turn around and heap praise on Coastal Carolina and Pepperdine for beating the Anteaters and claiming that a win over UCI is a great accomplishment. We’ll see how it is perceived in the weeks to come.

Let’s just see how things play out in the next month.

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ONE THING I PROBABLY SHOULD’VE MENTIONED FROM LAST WEEKEND… GO BIG EAST.
Even though I gave the Big 10 props for going 7-3 on the opening day of the Big 10/Big East Challenge. But what I should’ve pointed out was that the Big East went 7-3 on both Saturday and Sunday to close out the weekend with a 17-13 advantage in games played between the two conferences.

On top of that, the Big East also saw West Virginia beat Purdue 18-14 in a single game on Monday that was not officially affiliated with the Big 10/Big East Challenge. Kudos to you Big Easterners. Now if you can just get teams like DePaul, Marquette, Providence and Syracuse to pick the sport back up again, that’d be really cool.

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THE RARE INSTANCE OF COLLEGE BASEBALL GETTING SOME AD DOLLARS.
While watching the Minnesota vs. Minnesota-Duluth hockey game last Sunday night, I came across a 30-second commercial that was advertising this weekend’s upcoming Dairy Queen Classic that will be played in the Metrodome, featuring the host Minnesota Gophers, LMU, Northwestern and “traditional power” Oklahoma State (at least that’s what the copy in the spot said about the Cowboys).

A screen grab of the DQ Classic TV spot shown on Fox Sports North last weekend.

That’s pretty cool. It is extremely rare to see college baseball actually getting some advertising dollars thrown its way… especially from a northern program. Again, don’t tell me the University of Minnesota doesn’t spend money on the sport of baseball.

Brian Humphries has energized the top of the Waves order.

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IS PEPPERDINE READY FOR ITS CLOSE UP?
Despite all the great storylines and series that will take place this weekend in college baseball, one of the more interesting places to be is at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge. Pepperdine will head into the Tiger’s Den to take on LSU and will be joined there by Brown of the Ivy League for a three-team round-robin type of “tournament.”

I got a chance to talk briefly with Waves coach Steve Rodriguez following his teams’ 6-0 win over UCI on Tuesday. He will be making his first ever venture into Alex Box Stadium as a player or a coach on Thursday as the Waves will play two games with the host Tigers and also two games against the Bears.

Me:
Have you ever been to Baton Rouge before?

Coach Rodriguez:
No. Haven’t. And I can’t wait. It’ll be a lot of fun.

Me:
Are you going to stick with your big guns Matt Bywater and Cole Cook when you face off with LSU?

Coach Rodriguez:
Yeah, and honestly, it just kind of fell that way anyway. Cook’s pitch count has been down and he feels great and is ready to go Thursday (in game one vs. the Tigers) and then Bywater pitched a little bit on Sunday and kept his pitch count down, so he’ll be ready for when we play them on Saturday.

Me:
How did this tournament come about and you guys were able to play at LSU this year?

Coach Rodriguez:
It’s actually kind of funny. Originally we were going to go to LSU for a mid-week game on Wednesday and then go down to play Tulane on Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Then Tulane called and said, “We’ve gotta back out of playing you guys.”

Me:
So quick note here, Tulane is scared of you guys.

Coach Rodriguez:
(laughs) No, no. They had rescheduled for another weekend (now they’re playing Ole Miss instead) and had to bump us. So I called Coach Mainieri and said, “I want to play you guys but I can’t travel all the way out there just to play one mid-week game.” And Paul said, “Well let me call Marek Drabinski over at Brown and see if he’d be okay adding you guys for a three-team tournament.” And they were fine with it and said, “We’re coming out anyway, so if we can play, let’s play.” So it was great that Coach Mainieri was able to accommodate us like that. That was really nice of him.

Me:
Yep. He’s a nice guy. Talk about your state of the team as you go into LSU. I know you were worried about your offense this year. I know it’s early, but have they started to iron things out a little bit?

Coach Rodriguez:
What’s funny is that we’ve never had those huge monster home-run guys on our team. We don’t play that kind of baseball. I really think this is a different kind of group because they buy into the small things about baseball. Being able to bunt, do the hit-and-run, moving guys over. You know, that’s the thing, you don’t want to live and die with that stuff, you kind of want them to figure those things out as they play. But at the same time, when you NEED it, it has to be there. These guys have really bought into it. And you know they’re going to fail at times because this game is based on failure, but you know, they’ve really worked hard. And it’s a fun group to coach.

Me:
Is their mental toughness where you’d like it to be, especially going into a place like LSU?

Coach Rodriguez:
(Giving me that squint-eyed assured look) Oh I think so. I tell them all the time, you’re going to experience something you’ve never experienced before. You know, it’s great. That’s WHY we’re going. I want them to go to places like that. We’re going to go to East Carolina next year and to Louisville and I love having them go to new places and giving them a different experience and, frankly, I wish other schools from the East coast would come out here and give that unique kind of experience to their guys, you know what I mean?

Me:
Oh, you’re preachin’ to the choir with me on that coach. Especially me, as a fan, I love that stuff.

Coach Rodriguez:
Yeah, I just think it would be a lot more fun for college baseball. You know, I love it when Vanderbilt and Oklahoma State can come out here and play at Dodger Stadium, it’s great baseball and it’s fun to be able to see that. You get to see different types of baseball, the different styles, and of course, it’s fun for the kids too.

Me:
… and obviously it helps your team too, kind of tells you where you’re at as a team.

Coach Rodriguez:
Oh yeah, exactly. That’s what it’s all about to me.

Me:
Well coach, good luck in Baton Rouge, it’ll be fun to see how you guys do.

Coach Rodriguez:
Thanks. I look forward to it.

(Editor’s note: Damn! I forgot to tell him to go to The Chimes and get the fried alligator and crawfish etouffee.)

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THE TEN PLACES TO BE THIS WEEKEND.
Quickly here. If you’re in the area, don’t be cheap. Spend the pittance to get in and enjoy some great college baseball. Or risk turning in your “College Baseball Freak” membership card.

10- LSU Tournament.
LSU, Pepperdine, Brown.
We’ll see how the Tigers do finally taking on some semblance of a challenge with Cole and Bywater standing on the hill. I feel they’ll finally be motivated to play high-level ball.

9- LeMoyne at No. 11 Louisville.
I wonder if the Dolphins’ series win at Southern Miss got the Cardinals’ attention? Probably so, huh? This should be fun. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel, UofL.

8- No. 21 Ole Miss at Tulane
Not your father’s Green Wave team, but should still give a stiff challenge to the Rebs, who have been a little hither-and-yon.

7- No. 15 Arkansas at Cal
Just ask Vanderbilt in the last three years, trips to the west coast haven’t been kind to the hoofs of the SEC behemoths. But this IS a Dave Van Horn outfit here, so they’re used to tough road tasks.

6- San Diego Tournament
San Diego, San Diego State, Kentucky, Monmouth.
The Cats seem unaffected by the loss of James Paxton. We’ll see if that continues through this weekend. Keep an eye on that very-capable Monmouth team too.

5- Georgia at Florida State.
This one belies the Seminoles knack over the last few years where they don’t risk their non-conference perfection against high-quality opponents. But I dig it man.

4- South Carolina at/vs. Clemson.
As you guys know, I’ve been bagging on these teams for years for not playing a three-game weekend series. Well, finally, here we are. And the college baseball fan is the winner.

Another solid field of teams will go to Minute Maid Park.

3- No. 5 Florida at No. 10 Miami.
Now we’ll see how well Chris Hernandez and Eric Erickson, with their 1.64 and 2.31 ERAs, will do against this potent offense.

2- Coca-Cola Classic, Surprise, Arizona
Arizona State, Oregon State, Florida International, Cal Poly, Utah Valley and UC Riverside.
Great field. Should be interesting to see how unbeaten FIU and unchallenged ASU fare.

1- Astros College Classic, Houston.
Rice, Texas, Texas A&M, Houston, Texas Tech, TCU.
No west coast flavor to this year’s Classic, but still intriguing as all get-out. That Friday night matchup of Rice and Texas should be a thing of beauty. If only time travel were possible.

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Have fun this weekend.

G’night.