Trojan Beat

Updated: Troy Spring Schedule

Troy finally released its spring practice schedule here is the meat of what is on the athletics site. Also, Troy will not  scrimmage in Phenix City this year.

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The Troy University football team will open spring practice on Thursday, March 21, in Veterans Memorial Stadium. All of Troy’s spring practices, unless otherwise noted, are open to the public.

The Trojans will practice every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday leading up to the annual T-Day Spring Game on April 20 at 11 a.m. in Veterans Memorial Stadium.  Practices will begin at approximately 3:30 p.m. during the week and 10 a.m. on the weekend.

More on Maestri

HERE is a link to my article posted on The Messenger’s website.

Thanks to Barry McKnight and Jerry Miller to for posting THIS postgame interview with Maestri where he announced his retirement. He says “This is my last game, I’m retiring.” at the 2:10 mark.

HERE is the same audio that was posted to TroyTrojans.com via YouTube.

Hartwell begins search for basketball coach

Days after Don Maestri’s retirement announcement, Troy Athletic Director John Hartwell is prepping to begin the search for a new men’s basketball coach.

“We are in the process. April 1 is my target date so we certainly have a lot of work do do between now and then,” Hartwell said. “We’ve received a lot of interest in less than 48 hours time and are sorting through some of those candidates now.”

Hartwell said he plan on hitting the road this week to watch some of the coaches in action. Previous head coaching experience isn’t of major importance to Hartwell.

“I’m not one to get bogged down on previous head coaching experience. If you do your homework on guys, talk to people that they know, you can find out a lot about them. Certainly, previous head coaching experience is a plus, but some guys just have ‘it’.”

While an advisory committee will be formed but Hartwell said he will be the point-man for choosing the candidate to present to the university for hire.

Hartwell mentioned choosing a coach who can have success recruiting at the high school level, bringing in potential four-year athletes.

“Recruiting is a huge part of college athletics. I would like to see us getting into the routine of bringing a guy in and letting him learn the system for a few years, building him up to be a solid contributor.”

Troy’s 2012-13 roster featured just three players who signed with the Trojans out of high school (Sidki Suwallif, Breon Dixon and Mike Kelly).

UAB at Troy preview

Overview: Troy (11-3) hosts in-state rival UAB (7-9) Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Riddle-Pace Field. The Trojans are coming off a pair of wins over Hartford and a Sunday victory over Southeastern Louisiana. UAB fell in two of three games to Arkansas State on the road over the weekend.

What to Watch: Troy’s pitching staff might be finding its grove after a solid weekend. Will Starling was bumped to Saturday and turned in a strong performance throwing five innings and allowed just three hits. Shane McCain started Sunday’s gave giving the Trojans a better matchup against Southeastern Louisiana. McCain tossed seven innings allowing just three hits and a single run. For his performance, McCain was named Sun Belt Conference Pitcher of the Week. RHP Ryan Brady, who last pitched on Feb. 27 against Jackson State, will likely get the start on the mound for Troy against UAB. Danny Collins continued his hot hitting finishing the weekend 4-for-9 with a home run and three RBIs. In Saturday’s game against Hartford, Collins did go hitless for just the second time this season. He enters Tuesday’s game batting .511 with five home runs and 23 RBIs.

UAB took the opening series of the season from Southern Illinois but then fell in a pair of midweek game to Jacksonville State. The Blazers other series win came over Xavier. UAB is lead at the plate by 3B John Frost, who is batting .333 (20-60) with a home run and 10 RBIs. DH Ryan Prinzing and CF Chase Davis are also batting over .300 this season.

The Blazers pitching staff has had its share of ups and downs. Currently, they hold a team ERA of 4.41 and have struck out 110 batters while walking 64 in 140.2 innings.

Head coach Don Maestri announces retirement

Maestri wins No. 500

Troy head coach Don Maestri won his 500th game on Friday as the Trojans defeated Florida Atlantic 81-79 in overtime in the first round of the Sun Belt Championships.

Maestri becomes the 23rd active coach in Division I to reach 500 and is just the sixth active coach to do so at the same school.

The Trojans (12-20) had lost five straight games since Maestri won No. 499.

Troy will play Arkansas State in the quarterfinals at 9 p.m. on Saturday.

Stat of Note: David Felix — hired a season before Maestri in 1981 — has won 511 games as Troy’s assistant coach. His 500th victory came with Troy’s upset of Mississippi State to open the season.

***HERE is the full story I wrote on the game.

Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson’s statement at basketball tourney

Statement from Commissioner Karl Benson:
“The leadership of the Sun Belt Conference’s ten future members took the time to meet this morning and discuss the direction of our conference. While there was a great deal of important discussion, there have not been any invitations extended to those interested in joining our league. We continue to focus on the future strength of this league and we are to going to add additional members soon. We feel that the Sun Belt Conference has options – and they are good options.”

Opening Statement:
When I came in to the Sun Belt there was an expectation that a new Sun Belt would be built, with new structure, with more strength. However, if you look around the NCAA at other conferences, changes have been unprecedented. So we are here tonight with some uncertainty. Nevertheless, the goals of the Sun Belt have stayed the same. One of the reasons I took this job was because the Sun Belt has great options. There are schools within our footprint that want to be in our conference, and this gives us many options and alternatives. This was also the case a year ago when Texas State, Georgia State and Texas-Arlington joined the league. Even then, there were several others who expressed interest in our league and we told them they would stay in our vision.

On whether the Sun Belt needs to get to 12 football schools:
Right now we are looking at our potential pool of members that we feel have great value. I told all of our members after Middle Tennessee and Florida Atlantic departed that we want to keep the same goals that we established a year ago. We want to create two geographic divisions and make sure there’s at least 10 football schools while considering the option of 12. Our meeting today focused on our goals and re-established what we have called the “10-12 Model” where we have 10 football schools and 12 overall. We also want to make sure that the schools in our league make sense geographically and are regionally aligned. Within the next 30 days I expect us to be able to be in a position to announce what the new structure is going to be. If we wanted to add teams right now, we could do that this afternoon. We could add two all-sport schools, four schools with a mix of football and non-football, and we can mix and match if we wanted to right now. Though we want to be selective and make all the correct decisions. It takes time to get all

Troy women erase 15-point deficit to defeat South Alabama

The Troy women’s basketball team trailed by as many as 15 points in the first have but used a 23-2 run to take down South Alabama, 62-49, in the opening round of the Sun Belt Conference tournament in Hot Springs, Ark.

The Trojans (7-23, 4-17) in the No. 10 seed in the tournament. South Alabama was the No. 7 seed. Troy lost a heart-breaker to the Jaguars in the season finale, 71-70, on a last-second lay-in.

Coming into the game, South Alabama had won eight of the last nine and 15 of the last 17 meetings. USA led by four at halftime, 28-24, the Trojans came into the game 1-17 overall and 0-13 in SBC play when trailing at halftime. Troy held just one opponent to fewer than 60 points this season – a 56-39 loss to FIU.

Troy will play No. 2 UALR in the quarterfinals at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.

It was the first-ever win for the Trojans in the Sun Belt Conference tournament in Hot Springs. Troy is now 3-7 all-time in the Sun Belt Conference tournament.

Harford/SE LA at Troy preview

***ICYMI, HERE is a story that appeared in The Messenger earlier this week. It gives a small insight into the team’s recent success on the base paths. Troy wasn’t much of a threat stealing bases last season which led head coach Bobby Pierce to implement a new system. While he wouldn’t disclose many details of the program, he did say it involved the team being more of a distraction on the bases than anything else. At the time I wrote the article, Troy lead the league in stolen bases. Now they are behind only ULM.

Schedule: Friday – Troy vs. Hartford (6pm)
Saturday – Hartford vs. Southeastern Louisiana (1pm) / Troy vs. Hartford (6pm)
Sunday – Hartford vs. Southeastern Louisiana (10am) / Troy vs. Southeastern Louisiana (2pm)

Overview: Troy’s game with Samford on Tuesday was rained out. The Trojans are coming off a big series win over nationally ranked Southern Mississippi. The Trojans (8-3) lead the Sun Belt Conference in batting average (.322), triples (6) and slugging percentage (.539), are tied with the most doubles (30), rank second in stolen bases (18), RBIs (89) and home runs (12). Conversely, Troy is next to last in team ERA (4.15), have struck out the second fewest batters (89) and have surrendered the third most walks (45).

Hartford comes in 0-8 on the season with losses to Campbell (x4) and James Madison (x4). The team finished 16-40 last season with a 3-27 mark on the road. Trey Stover leads the Hawks at the plate batting .385 (10-26). Ryan Lukach (.267) has the team’s only home run one the season, so it doesn’t appears Hartford will pose much of a power threat. The Hawks have an astronomical team ERA of 9.91 and opponents are batting .341 against them.

Southeastern Louisiana is 8-4 on the season with victories over Tennessee-Martin (x3), BYU (x2), and Texas Southern (x3). The Lions have lost to LSU, Ole Miss (x2) and Tulane. RHP Jordan Hymel tossed a no-hitter in the team’s 9-0 win over Texas Southern on March 3. Harry Slate leads SELU at the dish batting .415 (17-41) with a .490 on-base percentage. Aaron Haag has knocked in 13 runs for the Lions while batting .317. As a team, SELU has a .264 batting average a but has struck out 81 times. The pitching staff, led by Sean Kennel (1-0, 1.74), has a 3.46 team ERA and has struck out 80 batters in 104 innings of work. Opponents are hitting .246 off of them.

What to Watch:  Troy’s Peyton Fuller certainly earned another shot to take over the everyday duties at second base for the Trojans. The freshman finished the series against Southern Miss 5-for-9 with two doubles, a home run and three RBIs. Danny Collins also turned in a solid series batting 7-for-11 with a pair of homers and five RBIs. In doing so, Collins was named Sun Belt Conference Player of the Week for the second time this season.

Injury Update: Troy outfielder Ali Knowles had a pin placed in his injured hand. He was not in uniform last weekend but is working to return in some capacity in the coming weeks. David Hall, who re-injured in foot against Alabama State has been allowed to do as much as he can in practice, but was still experiencing some pain prior to the series finale against Southern Mississippi.