Mired in Mediocrity

It's better to be average than bad. But it sure would be nice to be better than simply mediocre.

Such is the conundrum of Long Beach State's two biggest men's teams.

The basketball team followed up a 15-15 campaign in 2008-2009 with a 17-16 season in 2009-2010.

The Dirtbags are 20-20. They aren't cellar-dwellers and in the case of the basketball team they have come a long way from the six wins in Coach Monson's first season but the Boys of Blair have been a perennial power for the last two decades.

Now they can't get over the hump since their disappointing early exit from the regional they hosted at the end of the 2008 season.

Last year's squad was the first to finish under the .500 mark in the Dirtbag era (circa 1989) and the 2010 version has three home series left against Stanford, Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine - three of the best team's on the West Coast.

LBSU is 9-10 at home, 11-10 on the road and 7-8 in Big West play. In other words, they're staying afloat.

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Devin Lohman is putting together quite a junior season for "Shortstop U." His .420 batting average is more than 70 points better than anyone else and it will be real interesting to see what happens with him come draft time.

The big boys in the middle of the line-up - Tinoco and Terdoslavich - each have 40 RBI's and are hitting .348 and .335 respectively.

The line-up has produced much more than early in the season but there is not enough consistency from top to bottom or enough sure-fire run producing since the running game has been greatly reduced (46 SB's) and there's not a ton of pop with this group (20 HR's).

Drew Gagnon has pitched very well (2.82 ERA) but doesn't have the record to show for it (5-4) in large part since he has had to assume the role of Friday night starter and gets continually matched against the opponent's best guy.

Jake Thompson has struggled with his consistency. He has all the talent in the world with that power arm but has to keep his fastball down and avoid the big inning.

Branden Pinder has pitched pretty well as the Sunday guy but like Gagnon has had some tough luck getting on the right side of the decision.

Eddie Magallon and Nate Underwood have pitched fine in spot starts or long relief but the bullpen as a whole has struggled to really hold down opposing teams.

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LBSU has the schedule left to make a late postseason push. They have 14 games remaining, and nine in conference.

They are currently 67th in the RPI  and strong performances against the Cardinal (39th), Titans (12th) and Anteaters (42nd) could get them into the NCAA Tournament but they really need to be clicking on all cylinders and it may take at least ten more wins to get them into contention.