Poll: Micaela Capelle vs. John Canzano

Portland sophomore forward Micaela Capelle runnin' against John Canzano in the second round of the Willamette Week's "Mayoral Madness" bracket.

Help Micaela topple Canzano and advance a round!

Poll: Micaela Capelle vs. John Canzano

Pitching and Defense Getting it Done

Senior Kyle Kraus

The Portland Pilots baseball team won three of four games last week and improved to 13-3 overall. For as long as I can remember, coaches and players have always stated that pitching and defense wins baseball games. The truth could not be more evident this season as Portland is one of only two teams to be ranked in the top 10 nationally in both categories (the other… Stony Brook).

The same could be said for the West Coast Conference as a whole. Five WCC teams are ranked in the top 22 nationally in team ERA, while three are in the top 13 of team fielding percentage. It’s no wonder the league is off to one of its better starts to a season in some time. On to the weekly numbers.

NCAA Baseball Stats, courtesy of ncaa.com
Team ERA Leaders
8. St. Mary’s, 2.26
10. Portland, 2.36
13. San Francisco, 2.46
14. Pepperdine, 2.46
22. Gonzaga, 2.73

Team Fielding %
2. Pepperdine, .985
4. Portland, .983
13. Santa Clara, .979

Conference RPI Leaders, courtesy of boydsworld.com
1. ACC, .597
2. SEC, .596
3. Pac 12, .577
4. WCC, .543 (Portland is  No. 66 individually)

Conference ISR Leaders, courtesy of boydsworld.com
1. Pac 12, 114.2
2. ACC, 113.0
3. SEC, 113.0
4. WCC, 111.4 (Portland is No. 33 individually)

The Pilots will have a chance to boost those numbers this week when they begin conference play with a three-game set against the BYU Cougars (7-8, 91 RPI, 108 ISR). Souvenir Portland Pilots mini baseball bats will be given away at each of the three BYU home games to the first 100 fans in attendance! Check portlandpilots.com or @PortlandPilots on Twitter for updates in case game times/days get shuffled due to weather.

OTHER BASEBALL NOTES
* Portland cracked the perfectgame.org Top 50 for the first time this season (PerfectGame.org is a great site with lots of insight from college baseball writer, Kendall Rogers)
* This week’s games versus BYU are scheduled to be video streamed live on PortlandPilots.com. All Pilot home games have free audio broadcasts as well.

Is the WCC the second best baseball league in the nation?

While most of the nation is prepping for March Madness, and rightfully so, Portland’s fast start to the baseball season piqued my interest to check out one of my favorite college baseball web sites: boydsworld.com. It is a fantastic resource and very timely with updated RPI and ISR rankings, as well as some other useful information.

Like it or not, RPI is a metric used in nearly all college sports to help determine NCAA Championships at-large participants. The ISR (Iterative Strength Rankings) is Boyd Nation’s measure of a team’s quality (similar to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings for basketball on kenpom.com). Although it is early and the numbers may be skewed a bit, today’s look at the different metrics show very kindly to the West Coast Conference in baseball. Take a closer look the numbers:

Conference ISR:

1. Pac 12 (115.6)

2. WCC (113.6)

3. ACC (112.3)

4. SEC (111.7)

5. Big 12 (109.2)


Conference RPI:

1. ACC (.598)

2. SEC (.582)

3. Pac 12 (.571)

4. C-USA (.558)

5. WCC (.555)


Conference W-L Percentage

1. SEC (.745)

2. Pac 12 (.716)

3. ACC (.689)

4. WCC (.656)

5. MVC(.655)


No matter which metric you look at, the WCC is among the top five conferences in college baseball at this time. With the league only receiving one bid the NCAA playoffs in each of the last two seasons, a strong non-conference showing by the WCC’s nine teams will go a long way towards earning multiple bids in 2012. 

Portland (10-2) has matched its best start through 12 games in school history and is one of many WCC programs off to a fast start. The Pilots are individually rated No. 40 in the ISR and No. 65 in the RPI. In the ISR ratings, the WCC has four teams in the top 25 and eight of nine in the top 100. Based on the RPI, the league has four in the top 40 and seven in the top 100. 

The Pilots will have a good chance to better those numbers this week when they visit the Washington Huskies (10-9, ISR 49, RPI 64) on Tuesday at 5 p.m. Portland will then host Cal State Northridge (8-7, ISR 137, RPI 141) at Joe Etzel field for a three-game series beginning on Friday at 3 p.m.

OTHER BASEBALL NOTES: 

- Congratulations to Sr. RHP Owen Jones being named the WCC Pitcher of the Week

- The Pilots matched a school record with their 10th straight home win on Saturday

- With all but one of Monday’s major NCAA baseball polls released, no WCC teams are among the Top 25

·         Collegiate Baseball Top 30

·         Baseball America Top 25

·         NCBWA Top 25 (not released yet)

·         USA Today/ESPN Top 25 Coaches’ Poll

Serving Love - Women's Tennis Blog #1

Freshman Milagros Cubelli brings her Argentinean experiences and philosophy to the blogosphere as the author of the 2012 women’s tennis blog. Cubelli, who suffered a season ending injury in her second match, starts the adventure with an introduction of the team and a recap of the season. Be sure to bookmarkwww.portlandpilots.com/Cubelliblog to get the latest posts!

Freshman Milagros Cubelli after getting hurt earlier this year.

 
Duty has called and here is Milagros Cubelli reporting what is going on in the Women’s Tennis team at UP. It’s true…our team is not doing as well as the men’s team (they have a fantastic record of 7-1 this season). But who cares? The important thing is that our blog is so much better than theirs. I heard they have a guy from Salum… Salm...Alem…(or something like that) trying to explain what Twitter is about in his blog entry! Really, guys? I know it is difficult to be better than Argentinean writing a blog in English, but come on Jacko! You could have come up with something better!

Hopefully, the women’s tennis blog will be run out by the only Argentinean girl on campus, and that is…. me! Guys, I know that tennis never gets SOLD OUT [Editor’s note: all matches at UP are free to attend] but I can assure you that it will become more popular after you hear my stories.
 
First, let me introduce you to the team. As our coach repeats everywhere…”we have a very fresh new team this year”. I entered the team this season but after two months here, I think I am able to give a short portrayal of my amazing teammates….
 
Nastya Polyakova:
- Hometown: Saint-Petersburg, Russia
- Tennis player/Great ice cream eater
- Best shot: cheating on important points (and her forehand of course!!)
- Personality: Just Russian, say no more J
- Hobbies: she makes natural tattoos on her body (she scratches her legs while she plays and they bleed…come and watch, the show is free!)
- Famous phrase: “If they ask…I’m from Russia and I didn’t know”
 
Valeska Hoath:
-Hometown: Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
-Broken Tennis player
-Best shot: Forehand
-Personality: she is a fighter (and a little bit bossy)
-Hobbies: hanging out in the training room
-Famous phrase: “My boyfriend will teach me French and I will know three languages: English, French and Australian”.
 
Sabine Fuchs:
-Hometown: La Center, Washington
-Tennis player/ President of the WNA (Worldwide Nerds Association)
-Best shot: ten-hour matches! (You can have breakfast, lunch and dinner watching her matches)
-Personality: adorable nerdy
-Hobbies: homework
-Famous phrase: “Oh! No! I will have an exam in two years, I have to start studying now!”
 
Alice Tucker:
-Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
-Tennis player
-Best shot: backhand and serve (she throws her racket very well too!)
-Personality: Alice “Smiley” Tucker
-Hobbies: making fun of my language barrier.
-Famous phrase: I don’t know because I don’t understand her when she talks. I need subtitles!
 
Emily “The Turtle” Mahairas:
-Hometown:  Seattle, Washington
-Tennis player/ important participations at the circus in Seattle.
-Best shot: Forehand and hard worker.
-Personality: completely crazy!
-Hobbies: Skype...
-Famous phrase: “Skype is the key for happiness”
 
Katy Krauel
-Hometown: Portland, Oregon.
-Tennis player
-Best shot: running into the walls and hard work.
-Personality: Softy
-Hobbies: she loves to lotion her body
-Famous phrase: “In which part of Europe is Argentina??” (Thanks Krauel!!!!)
 
Gab Cosette
-Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii.
-Tennis player
-Best shot: Backhand
-Personality: she is from Hawaii and she doesn’t surf, that’s it!
-Hobbies: talking to her knee
 
And last but not least…
 
Milagros  “The Queen of Pictionary” Cubelli
-Hometown: Buenos Aires or the Training Room
-Injured Tennis Player/ Blogger/ Poet /Clown
-Best shot: falling on the court
-Personality: declared insane
-Hobbies: Bothering people, poetry and having surgeries.
-Famous phrase: “In Argentina we have the best meat of the world” / “Vamos! Dale!”
 
Now that you know this amazing tennis team, I will make a brief overview of our performance in this season. So far, we defeated Portland State and Seattle U and we lost against University of Oregon, Montana, Washington University and Air Force. But the good thing is that we play good at home so we are ready to beat the Eagles from Eastern Washington this Saturday at the Louisiana Pacific Center at 2:00.  Since I will not be shouting “Vamos!” at the court because of my knee injury (just wait to read the poem I wrote to my knee in the next entry) the tennis center will be very quiet. So I invite all of you to watch our match against Eastern Washington this Saturday and keep the Louisiana Pacific Tennis Center loud for me. See you there.
 
Mili Cubelli
 
 
Ps: if someone has an extra wrist or knee (left if possible) please do not hesitate to call me.

Men's Tennis Blog #3

he men's tennis team is taking turns writing the blog this season, and sophomore Michel Hu Kwo updates fans with the adventures in Texas and playing on outdoor courts for the first time this season. Be sure to bookmark portlandpilots.com/MTENblog and follow the Pilots all season long!
 
Previous Entries:
Blog Entry #1 – Geoff Hernandez (Feb. 17)
Blog Entry #2 – Jackson Martin (March 1)
 

So here I am, taking the chance to write our third team blog about our trip down to Texas, San Antonio. I have to say that there is tremendous amount of pressure writing this blog, since it will be the first publication from the international side of the team [Editor’s note: Although Canadian Geoff Hernandez penned the first one, Hernandez’ first language is English]. You guys should know that any flaws in this blog will become a joke among the team and the person who wrote this will be made fun of for couple days….Haha!
 
I will start by a quick summary of this trip. We left on Thursday early in the morning and came back on Sunday close to midnight. We played UTPA; won 6:1 and UTSA; lost 1:6. Some of the highlights in this trip are definitely the “awesome” sunny weather (besides the sun burn we got from not putting on sun screen) and the team bonding moment in the 6 ft diameter tiny hot tub after our win against UTPA. Our dinner at the Saltgrass Steak house was also one of the “awesome” moments in this trip, satisfying our hunger and eagerness of just eating tons of meat, besides J dawg [Justin Guay] who had an attempt to order chicken strips in the kids menu.

One of the most memorable moments in this trip is during our first hit after we arrived SA. All of the guys were so eager to take off their shirts right after they entered the court, since we assumed that this was the only chance we can show off our body and get some tan going. The irony part of this story is that the only people in the tennis facility at that time were just ourselves (a bunch of dudes) and that every one of us was sun burnt after the hit, and the sky was pretty cloudy and the temperature was not THAT hot.
 
I have to say that this trip was pretty rough in terms of tennis because we had a very hard time adjusting the outdoor courts, but also rewarding because all of us fought hard to win. Comparing it to our experience of adjusting outdoor last year, we definitely showed a tremendous amount of improvement in terms of accepting the fact that complaining will not make a difference and that we need to just figure out ways to bypass the harsh conditions to win. Although we had our first lost against UTSA, the matches were very close and the UTSA players really needed to work hard to take the wins from us.
 
Overall, this trip was very rewarding despite our lost against UTSA. We fought hard on the court and gave our best to prevent the lost. We will keep working hard and hopefully bounce back for our three home matches coming up this weekend! 

Sun Burnt Stefan trying to be cute……

Geoff: Loving his clutch order of T-bone with baked sweet potato)
(Alex: Enjoying the love of meat after giving up his vegetarian diet last semester….)

Team dinner pic at Saltgrass Steak House after our 6:1 win against UTPA


Highlights: check out the Brazilian swag from Daniel wearing his flip flops.

The Vegas Blog with Sarah Griffin

The 2012 WCC Championships are upon us, and the University of Portland men's and women's basketball teams have arrived in Las Vegas, Nev. We want to share the experience with you, so Sarah Griffin of the women's hoops program will be checking in with a blog throughout her stay in Vegas.

***Scroll down for previous entries

ENTRY #4
Monday, March 5, 2012

Sarah Griffin has put together another video for her final entry of the Vegas Blog.

VEGAS VIDEO #2

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ENTRY #3
Thursday, March 1, 2012

Editor's Note: This entry of the Vegas Blog is a video entry, which Sarah Griffin put together on Portland's first day at the 2012 WCC Championships...

WATCH VIDEO

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ENTRY #2
Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012

Hey Pilot Fans,

Day 2 in Las Vegas, and first day of the Zappos.com West Coast Conference Championship. The Pilots were busy today (Wednesday), waking up bright and early for shoot-around at the Orleans Arena. While we were at the arena the Orleans and WCC were making final preparations for the tournament.

After shoot-around, the Pilots returned to The Palms for brunch. Following brunch, some Pilots enjoyed a little r&r, while others hit the books. Amy had to write a paper for her history course, and Philly and Nikki studied for exams. As for ReZina (my roommate) and myself, well, we watched Jersey Shore.

The Pilots reconvened for film in “The Mint” conference room. Coach Cheryl led the film session and reviewed the game film from when the Pilots and Broncos last met. The Broncos defeated the Pilots 70-71, and shot an impressive 7/12 (58%) from the 3-point range in the second half – wow! The Pilots had a difficult time shutting down the Bronco’s Sr. PG, Alyssa Shoji, who scored 24 or her 28 points from outside the arc.

With that being said, it will be crucial for us to keep them off the arc and to contest ALL shots!

Once we finished film it was time for practice. I have been experimenting with iMovie and YouTube. Below is a short video of today’s practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzVqi4LixME&context=C31c2393ADOEgsToPDskIYsLspYHVKaE-sRp02I3e1

Later in the evening, we returned to the Orleans Arena to support our men’s team. The men faced the Santa Clara Broncos in a thrilling first round match-up. They set the tone for Pilot Hoops as they defeated the Broncos 74-70 (Recap). On Thursday the men will play after us against the San Francisco Dons at 6:00 p.m. You can catch both games on BYUtv, or listen online.

It’s our turn now to take care of business. Wish us luck!

GO PILOTS!

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ENTRY 1
Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

Hey Pilot Fans,

Sarah Griffin here, and I will be taking over blogging duties for the Pilots’ trip to Las Vegas for the WCC Tournament. I know many of you cannot join us in Las Vegas; however, we still want our fans to be able to experience the tournament with us. Therefore, I will post blogs regularly and you can also follow us via Twitter (PilotsWBB)… so, what happens in Vegas… well, doesn’t really stay in Vegas.

The Pilots departed The Bluff early this morning (Tuesday) and landed in Las Vegas just shy of noon (Welcome home, Byrdie!). Upon arriving at The Palms it was time for lunch. The Pilots thoroughly enjoyed the buffet located downstairs, which accommodated every player’s craving. There was salad, soup, international, Asian, soul food, plenty of desserts… you name it! As Keisha said, “Buffet: You’re a jack of many trades.”

After lunch, the Pilots had time to digest their lunch before practice, which I think was wise and necessary considering the bizarre lunch combos that were consumed by some of the girls. I can’t imagine ribs, pad Thai and frozen yogurt settles well… anyway, some Pilots squeezed in a short nap, while others watched some T.V. before we left for practice.

Practices are held at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center. In fact, I am currently sitting on the sideline keeping busy, writing this post. The Pilots (7) are preparing for their contest versus the Santa Clara Broncos (6), Thursday at 2:30 p.m. You can watch the game live on BYUtv, or listen online.

Not only have the Pilots suffered a recent heartbreaking loss to the Broncos (recap), but the Pilots and Broncos also share a history of first-round meetings at the WCC Tournament. This will be the third year in a row that the Pilots and Broncos meet in first-round play. In 2010, the Pilots made an early exit as they fell to the Broncos, 61-74. However, the following year, the Pilots defeated the Broncos 75-64, and advanced to the semifinals.

Considering the Pilots recent loss to the Broncos, coupled with the teams’ cutthroat history at the Tournament, Thursday’s match-up will undoubtedly be an exciting game. Anyway, I am totally pumped for the game, but we still have one whole day before the girl’s take the stage.

I will touch base with you all tomorrow. Until then…