We're giving these gold statuettes away to the best teams of the day. And the Oscar goes to...

Weekend three of the 2010 season comes to a close with a lot of fanfare and projections of who the worthy winners are and what they did to earn the spotlight on this college baseball Sunday.

So in honor of that timeless tradition of the Oscars ceremony, let’s put this weekend of stitched-ball action in the books and announce our winners of the day and the weekend.

The first limo of the evening has just pulled up, so cue the music and let the flashbulbs start lighting up the sky. And again, gentlemen, put on your best suit and tie and high-shine shoes. Ladies, get that dress that shows off as much skin as possible. The immense cleavage wars begin here.

Here are some of the Oscar-worthy performances in college baseball on this magical night in TinselTown.

Mariah Carey and her escort provide us with another example of the greatest double-standard in the world. Girls: lots of skin and plunging necklines. Guys: Completely covered.

.
BEST LEADING MAN.
- Furman outfielder Will Owens.

Not sure why, but pitchers continued to throw to this guy despite the ridiculous hot streak he got on. The premium Paladin went a robust 11-for-14 (.786) in their four wins this week, including three home runs, 10 RBI and an .800 on-base percentage.

Furman improved to 5-6 on the season after beating Dayton 12-3 on Thursday, then sweeping Ohio over the weekend by scores of 11-9, 13-8 and today’s 10-7 win.

.
BEST SUPPORTING ROLE.
- Jeremy Erben, RHP, Oklahoma.

The Sooner closer actually won three games in his four appearances in relief for the Big Red this week. In 6.0 total innings of support work, Erben struck out eight batters and held his opponents scoreless as the Sooners went unbeaten in four games.

Erben is now 5-0 on the season, leading the Big 12 in victories. He also has an ERA of just 0.57 in 15.2 innings of work. Hmmm… now you see why OU’s 11-1 start is pretty damed impressive.

.
BEST DIRECTOR.
- George Horton, Oregon.

The Oregon Ducks are really starting to grow wings. Going 4-0 in games at Beiden Field against the Fresno State Bulldogs is pretty freakin’ amazing. Those Bulldogs may not be a national champion contender, but they’re not chopped liver. Today, Horton’s Heroes won 8-3, with the help of leadoff man extraordinaire K.C. Serna, who had three hits, and J.J. Altobelli, who tripled and scored three runs.

In the five wins this week, the Ducks went all Horton-esque, committing just four errors and issuing just nine walks. THAT’S the kind of discipline he was looking for from this team last season, but it never came… until now.

Best, unknown stat of the week? How about that mid-week, Tuesday night crowd of 2,609 that saw the first home game of the season for the Ducks. That’s getting a fan base behind you.

.
THE BEST LITTLE INDEPENDENT FILM THAT SWEEPS THE FIELD.
- The Houston Cougars.

Quiet, unassuming and sitting over there against the wall “like they was Poindexter”. That’s a good way to describe the 3-6 Cougars going into this weekend’s Houston College Classic.

But just like Precious, the Blue and Red stunned the field of challengers with an unlikely performance. The hometown Cougars ended up going 3-0 on the weekend, marking their first time of ever going unbeaten in the Classic, including back-to-back shutouts of Missouri and Texas. Today, a 10-run second inning and five Texas Tech errors helped UofH to streak out to a 15-8 win.

The Coogs are now 5-5 and will head out to Cal Poly this coming weekend. Let’s see if the magic continues or not.

.
THE MERYL STREEP AWARD.
This is the one where you KNOW you’re going to get recognition for beating big-name teams and playing like a big-time talent. (That was awkwardly worded. Sorry, I tried).

- Florida and Arizona.

The Gators won at Miami today, 4-2, completing the series win at Mark Light Stadium. Impressive.

The Wildcats won its series with Fullerton today with the 10-1 shelling of the team that is now a shell of its former self.

The Wildcats are sitting pretty after a weekend series win over Fullerton.

.
THE IRVING THALBERG LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD.
- North Florida’s Dusty Rhodes.

The longtime head honcho of the Ospreys, who has already announced that this will be his final season, got lauded into royalty when the UNF administration decided this week to re-name the Harmon Stadium diamond to its new official name as “Dusty Rhodes Field.”

On top of that, the Ospreys finished this week’s play in the Kennel Club Classic with a pair of wins today, 10-6 over Alcorn State and 11-7 over Wagner. With the two wins, UNF now stands at 6-6 on the season.

.
BEST DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE.
- Sam Houston State.

Go ahead and roll out a red carpet to the I.C.U. in the nearest hospital for all those Bearkat fans after today’s two SHSU games. It was white-knuckle city man. Damn.

In game one, The Sam beat Northern Colorado 4-3 in 15 innings when Doug Oney hit a solo home run to end the marathon affair. Then, as if that wasn’t dramatic enough, their game with Creighton saw four lead changes and also saw the Bearkats score three runs in the bottom of the 9th, including the jog-off single by Greg Olson, to get the 11-10 win over the Jays.

.
UGLIEST HORROR SCENE.
- Georgia State killing a bunch of Eagles with their bats.

The Panthers completed the weekend sweep of North Carolina Central with a 33-5 win. In the four games, GSU scored 103 runs, breaking the school single game scoring record of 22 runs three different times in the four games.

I guess the Panthers just didn’t have a heart this weekend… so they had to go and carve out the Eagles’ hearts as well. Ouch.

.
MOST OFFENSIVE PERFORMANCE.
- St. Joseph’s and New Mexico State.

Georgia State was just a solo performance. But today we also saw these TWO teams go ass-crazy at the dish. SJU, a perennial weak-sister, seemed to take out their frustrations for years of abuse, beating the Aggies 35-16.

The Hawks broke school records for most runs scored and most hits in a game, with 35 and 31 respectively. The 4-hour, 40-minute marathon saw seven doubles and eight home runs hit in the wind-tunnel known as Las Cruces. The struggle-of-a-game also saw each team draw 11 walks in the game. There were also only a grand total of just four scoreless half-innings in the entire linescore.

This is evidently where good pitching goes to die.

The only good thing about watching today's Georgia-Florida State game was the excellent interview Sun Sports did with Chase Veazey's mother, a former All American softballer at FSU, about her son's paralysis.

.
BEST COMEDY.
- The series between Florida State and Georgia.

I’m pretty sure all of us thought this was gonna be one of THE marquee matchups of the weekend. I mean, you thought so too, right? But after these last three days, it’s evident that it was a genuine laugher. Florida State beat the Dogs today 17-5, to go along with Friday’s 12-1 win and Saturday’s 9-2 win.

The stats were almost as if the ‘Noles were back playing Hofstra again or something. FSU outscored the Bulldogs 38-8, hitting .369 as a team and sporting an ERA of 2.00. On top of all that, the Seminoles also drew 14 walks in today’s game alone and suffered four plunkings.

Bad dog, UGa! Whadja do, crap the rug again?

.
BEST BREAKOUT PERFORMANCE.
- Indiana.

Get this. The Hoosiers went 2-1 on the weekend, including wins over Illinois State (6-to-4) and a good Kent State team (3-to-zip). Then, today, IU took Vanderbilt to extra innings, nearly pulling off the unlikely upset of the No. 25 team in the country, before falling 6-5 in 11 innings. .

But that’s not the unusual part of the story.

According to IU’s sports information department, check out who was pitching for them today: Staff ace Blake Monar is out for the next few weeks, so the first three pitchers the Hoosiers used today were Ethan Wilson (who hadn’t thrown since he was 12), Matt Ernest (who hadn’t pitched since high school) and Casey Smith (who graduated high school in December to enroll at IU in the spring). Also, first baseman Jarred Sabourin came in to pitch three innings in today’s loss to the Commodores. In all, seven IU pitchers were used and still they pushed the game to 11 innings.

Not bad for a bunch of second-hand pitchers that any normal-thinking human would’ve predicted they were to have been shelled into submission.

.
OH, WHAT I SAW AT DEDEAUX FIELD TODAY.
Almost forgot to tell you guys… With rain pelting Phoenix this morning, I decided to come on back to Smogland and check out New Mexico, who was playing a DH at USC. Game one of today’s twin-bill went to the Trojans, 6-2.

UNM's Jason Howard went 5-for-6 with five Ribs to pace the Lobos. Ricky Oropesa (right) led the Trojans with two hits at his leadoff spot.

But game two, which I arrived at just in time to see the first pitch of the second inning, was all Lobos as they raced out to a big early lead and held on to win the weekend series and improve to 8-4 on the season. And of course, a series win on the road at USC is another feather in the cap of the Lobos, who I’ve got rated very high in my current Top 25 ballot that I fill out for the NCBWA poll.

U.N.M. Lobos – 425 410 000 – 16 20 2
USC Trojans – 600 000 010 – 7 14 1

WP: Rich Olson (1-2)
LP: Jordan Hershiser (0-1)
Save: None.

Both teams beat the piss out of the ball early and often, scoring a combined 10 runs in the 1st inning alone. But New Mexico kept pounding, and pounding, and pounding. Eventually, after three innings, the score was UNM up by an 11-6 margin, and the game was never in doubt from there.

USC ended up using seven pitchers on the day, looking for right combination to cool the Lobo bats – but it only seemed to stoke the fires instead.

I didn’t end up doing any on-field post-game interviews with Ray Birmingham or anything because I had been up since 6am and made the long drive from Phoenix and I was anxious to get done with that game and get to the Oscar party I was invited to. Hope they didn’t mind me bringing my computer. I will get the chance to see UNM again later on this season when they play at San Diego State in the first weekend of May and at the MWC tournament that will also be played on Montezuma Mesa in late May.

Lobo sparkplug Adam Courcha hit for the short cycle, going 3-for-5.

Quick note about the Lobos… I know this was a Sunday pitching rotation they faced, but the bats of the Lobos were very impressive. Not as if the .346 team batting average isn’t indication enough. But I’ve never seen a team with quicker swings in my life. There were so many late swings that turned into singles to opposite fields, because they did the simple job of throwing the bat out there and making contact. That’s it. That’s all it seemed to take.

But despite all the defensive swings that turned into base hits, this was also a well-disciplined batting order, striking out just six times in 45 at-bats. They were also potent, getting 20 hits in the second game, including six doubles, a triple and a home run in dismantling the pice-mealed USC mound corps.

At 8-4 currently, I look forward to seeing how this team ends up. Pitching-wise, I didn’t see UNM at its best (USC did have 14 hits in the game), but they did issue just one walk in the contest, showing good discipline on the mound as well.

.
Okay, that’s enough. I hope your team won a statuette for you guys today. More to come, but enjoy your winnings for now.

G’night.