On Thursday the Bucs went to Jacksonville- who are actually a competitive baseball team- and scored 10 in the first inning to win 21-4.

Yesterday, the Bucs scored four runs in the ninth to pull out a 5-3 victory.

I will say that of the 10 runs, only 3 were earned, but Friday night's rally came off a respectable pitcher who had averaged less than a baserunner an inning.

The Bucs are catching the Dolphins on a bad run- they've lost four of five- but still.

Of course, the lesson here is that the A-Sun is not as good as was advertised this season. All of the Bucs victories have come against A-Sun teams, whereas ETSU is 0-4 this season against Big South and OVC opponents.

Final note- this is on covering baseball and goes to the ETSU students who put together the "Buccaneer Sports Update" on Bill Meade's show.

I was listening and I heard a wrapup of Tuesday's Mercer game.

"A ninth-inning rally was not enough and the Bucs lost, 11-4."

Somebody tell whoever it is writing copy that-

A- When you lose 11-4, 3 runs in the ninth are not a rally. If the score was close enough to merit a save, yes, but this was "Oh, by the way" scoring.

Sort of like those fourth quarter touchdowns the Dallas Cowboys used to get against the Steelers in the Super Bowl back in the '70s.

In this case, Mercer put in a bottom of the line relief pitcher to close out an 11-1 game. He probably isn't even on scholarship. ETSU got one of their runs on a wild pitch.

B- This isn't even a situation where you're trying to be nice to the home team. If you want to do that- and it is a Bucs show- say:

"Bucs highlights included Jason Fabry's three hits and a seven inning outing by Brandon Langston- who took the loss trying to rest the Bucs' bullpen."

Now- Langston only walked two hitters in the outing. Sounds to me like he was told to throw strikes so the 'pen could be saved and he could go seven on just 110 pitches.

Here's the shot now to ask Langston or Skole about this: "He's a better pitcher than that, but under the circumstances we had to ask him to make a minimum number of pitches, which made it easier for Mercer to hit him."

C- The bottom line is if you're going to use this as a resume tape, talking about a 3-run rally in the bottom of the ninth of an 11-4 loss just sounds terrible.

The ASUN is not as good in baseball as the other member institutions would like to think. The SoCon ranked above the ASUN last year.

Here are the current college baseball RPI ratings:

Division I Overall
Rank Rating W L W L Conference

1 0.607 108 46 108 47 Pac 10
2 0.598 163 71 163 71 ACC
3 0.575 138 61 140 61 Big 12
4 0.569 90 69 90 69 Big West
5 0.568 153 75 157 75 SEC
6 0.554 98 62 99 63 WCC
7 0.535 111 61 111 61 C-USA
8 0.521 110 93 114 94 Sun Belt
9 0.520 63 70 66 70 WAC
10 0.519 113 72 118 72 Southern
11 0.512 106 100 106 100 CAA
12 0.507 67 70 67 70 Mountain West
13 0.503 75 66 77 67 MVC
14 0.491 108 120 113 125 Southland
15 0.490 61 77 62 77 Big Ten
16 0.484 80 97 89 111 Atlantic Sun
17 0.481 107 98 108 101 Big East
18 0.475 40 66 44 68 Summit
19 0.468 70 113 74 114 MAC
20 0.466 103 114 107 118 Atlantic 10
21 0.461 64 85 67 87 Big South
22 0.459 27 69 29 71 Horizon
23 0.452 73 86 78 90 OVC
24 0.447 32 59 34 61 Ivy
25 0.446 42 72 43 75 MAAC
26 0.441 67 107 78 112 Independents
27 0.441 32 59 32 59 America East
28 0.417 42 51 44 52 Patriot
29 0.410 19 84 19 85 NEC
30 0.408 51 82 73 94 SWAC
31 0.393 24 82 31 84 MEAC

http://www.boydsworld.com/baseball/rpi/confrpi.html

By the way, ETSU is ranked 261 out of 293.

I'm surprised the Big East is 17. At one point they were a Top 8.

I'm also surprised the Big 10 is 15. All that money they have.

Granted, these are northern schools, but we're now in an era in which Oregon State can win back-to-back College World Series.

Regardless, a lot of the A-Sun's baseball stock had to fall when they lost the Florida schools. UCF is currently ranked in the Top 20.