Opening day start:
Newcomer Owen Dew gets the nod to start Opening Day Friday.
The junior out of Tallahassee was ranked as the fourth-best newcomer in Conference USA this season by Baseball America.
A 33rd round draft pick by the Angels last summer, Dew was a member of the All-Mid Florida Conference First Team for the Seminole State College of Florida in 2009.
The top returning players for 2010:
RF Shane Brown (2B in `09) – .341, 73 H, 20 2B
C Beau Taylor – .335, 55 H, 26 runners CS
IF/RP D.J. Hicks – .301, 8 HR, 4-5, 3 SV
LF Chris Duffy – .285, 6 HR, 36 RBI
2B Stephen Branca – .353, 2 HR in four games
RP Jordan Rasinski – 4.05 ERA, 2-0, 1 SV
RP Cory Weech – 5.96 ERA, 4-1, 1 SV
What is new for 2010:
What’s new has certainly given UCF a lot of national attention. Rooney and his staff witnessed their recruiting class be ranked No. 4 in the country by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper and No. 10 by Baseball America. Baseball America placed three of those players in its top-10 newcomers of C-USA:
No. 1 – CF Ronnie Richardson
No. 4 – RHP Owen Dew
No. 9 – SS Darnell Sweeney
All three are slated to be starters on Opening Day
Our House:
UCF set a school record last year by averaging 1,088 fans per home game.
The Knights also broke the single-game (2,758) and series (5,582) attendance records a year ago.
