College Sports Madness' Atlantic 10 Preview

Lauren Nacke

College Sports Madness, a new college sports website has been doing previews for the upcoming softball season. This past week it released its picks for the Atlantic 10 All-Conference honors.

Field Player of the Year			Pitcher of the Year
Lauren Nacke, Dayton			Jen Mineau, Fordham
Freshman of the Year			Coach of the Year
Taylor Pirone, Fordham			Terri Adams, St. Joseph's

These are all worthy picks for the All-Conference honors, though we may have some different choices when our picks are announced in a couple weeks. We will not pick a Coach of the Year winner though. That award may be the most difficult to award, as it can be given to the coach with the best team or the coach whose teams shows the most improvement. It is frankly to subjective for our liking.

Here are the pre-season All-Conference teams (1st and 2nd) as selected by College Sports Madness:

First Team			Second Team
P	Jen Mineau, Fordham		P	Erin Gallagher, St. Joseph's
P	Sara Plourde, Massachusetts		P	Kara Clauss, George Washington
P/IF	Jamie LaBovic, Fordham		P	Alysha Isaacson, Dayton
IF	Brooke Frey, St. Bonaventure		IF	Sarah Prezioso, Temple
IF	Lauren Nacke, Dayton		IF	Kyllie Magill, Massachusetts
IF	Bernadette Moran, St. Joseph's		IF	Nicole Massoni, Rhode Island
IF	Monica Aguilar, St. Joseph's		IF	Gabby Luety, Fordham
IF	Rachel Knable, Temple		IF	Nicole Callahan, Fordham
OF	Briana Gwaltney, Charlotte		OF	Cyndil Matthew, Massachusetts
OF	Dana Parks, St. Joseph's		OF	Chelsea Lenhart, George Washington
OF	Kathleen Maloof, Dayton		OF	Lindsey Webster, Massachusetts
UTIL	Stephanie Pasquale, Temple		UTIL	Kalie Lang, Charlotte

Once again worthy selections all around, though our will be different in certain areas. It is also worth noting that this website lists catchers under the infielders position. We would opt to use a different formatting.

College Sports Madness also has been doing a preview of the teams that they think are the 44 best in the country and Fordham came in at #43.

As with all previews (including ours) take it with a grain of salt.

Though some of the previews on this site have raised a few eyebrows. Somehow Missouri, a participant at the last three WCWS got picked to finish 37th. This is despite returning both starting pitchers including USA national team member Chelsea Thomas. They should be listed in the top 10 if not the top 15, this is a perplexing pick. There are quite a few other questionable one as well, even though they are only 10 teams in to the top 44 (which is an absurdly arbitrary number in our opinion).

The site has also released its All-American picks and national award winners. Those leave something to be desired as well. Jen Mineau earned 4th team honors and Sara Plourde was not recognized at all. Frankly, that is insulting to the Atlantic 10, as both pitchers are among the best nationally. It is our hope that both of them can go out and prove this website wrong, along with the entire conference as a whole. This website clearly believes that the A10 will be a one-bid league in 2012 and that is flat out incorrect. The A10 will most likely get two bids, but there is also a very strong possibility for three bids and an outside shot at four.

From the point of view of this blog, they tried to provide a comprehensive preview, but they it looks as though they stretched their resources too thin and failed to put forth the necessary research required. It is not hard to find errors and omissions when looking over the site, but we wish them well and are interested in seeing future material they have on the Atlantic 10.