A year ago the 2006 Florida Gators baseball team with most of their offensive firepower back for another run were ranked the top team in the country in the pre-season polls. It was in 2005 Florida Gators baseball team had their best season ever making it all the way to the College World Series championship before losing to the Texas Longhhorns. Their were a lot of expectations for this Florida Gator team with its high powered offense centered around Matt LaPorta the NCAA HR champ of 2005, a candidate for the Brooks Wallace college player of the year award. But, the pitching staff is where the uncertainty lied. Unfortunately right before classes were to start, Alan Horne who helped lead the Gators to the CWS decidied to forgo his senior year and sign with the Yankees. Additionally, Stephen Locke went down with a season ending elbow injury prior to the season. As a result, Bryan Ball was thrust into role of the #1 pitcher. The Gators started off the season strong in beating Miami in Coral Gables, but with LaPorta out for a major portion of the year with a nagging oblique muscle injury, the season quickly unraveled for this Florida Gator team. They lost 10 of 15 going from SEC Champs to Chumps. The Gators finished at the bottom of the SEC East with a 10-20 record within the SEC. Thats the type of season that gets coaches fired, but Coach McMahon is back for 2007 and looking for a chance to turn this thing around with a fairly young team.

Gone from the 2006 team are the following former Florida Gators who signed with a MLB team :

Closer Darren O’Day (a fifth year senior) who wasn’t selected in the 2005 draft became a free agent the day the Gators season ended and signed with the Angels instead of re-entering for the draft.

2B/SS Adam Davis was the first Florida Gator to hear his name called in the 2006 draft in the third round by the Cleveland Indians

C Brian Jeroloman was selected by the Toronto Blue Jays in the sixth round.

OF Gavin Dickey the former Gator QB was drafted in 12th round by Seattle.

3B David Cash who is the son of former major leaguer Dave Cash was selected in 40th round by Baltimore.

The Gator baseball team begins play this Friday Feburary 9th at McKethan Stadium starting a three game series against VMI. Unlike last year, they are not ranked in the Pre-Season Poll . The predicted opening day lineup looks like this

Bryan Augenstein was the breakout pitcher last year coming out of nowhere to establish himself as the Ace of the staff. He and Matt LaPorta headline on the Baseball America pre-season All America team. LaPorta who saw his draft stock drop last year where he played in only 43 games played in the Cape League this summer and decided not to sign with the Red Sox and return to school. The Gators hope to get a boost from freshman Riley Cooper from the Gators National Championship Football team who hopes to join the baseball team. If the Gators can ride Bryan Augenstein’s arm and LaPorta’s bat, they can be in the thick of it. Unfortunately, this is a real young team with not a lot of depth.

If you are not a big fan of ncaa-baseball, its exciting to follow this SEC division who always turns out the talent. This year Baseball America has launched a college baseball blog , which will be a nice supplement to other quality college baseball sites like ncaa-baseball blog , NCAA Stats site, College Baseball Podcast and Big 10 Hardball.