Game 1: Utah Valley vs. Gonzaga  |  Weekend Notes
Friday, Feb. 13   |   11 a.m. MT  |  Live Stats

Game 2: Utah Valley vs. Cal State Northridge
Friday, Feb. 13  |  3 p.m. MT  |  Live Audio  |  Live Stats

Game 3: Utah Valley vs. Cal State Northridge
Saturday, Feb. 14  |  3 p.m. MT  |  Live Audio  |  Live Stats

Game 4: Utah Valley vs. Gonzaga
Sunday, Feb. 15  |  11 a.m. MT  |  Live Stats

OREM, Utah — Utah Valley Baseball begins its 2015 season this weekend in Southern California with four games at the CSUN Invitational: two against the host Cal State Northridge and two against Gonzaga.

The Wolverines will face Bulldogs, of the West Coast Conference, to open the season on Friday at 11 a.m. MT followed by a 3 p.m. start against the CSUN, members of the Big West Conference. UVU will face the Matadors again on Saturday at 3 p.m. before finishing the weekend on Sunday at 11 a.m. against Gonzaga.

UVU and GU have met 21 times prior to this weekend, with the Bulldogs winning 16 of those games. Utah Valley will face Cal State Northridge for the third straight season, having never beaten th Matadors in five tries.
The Wolverines are coming off of a 28-30 season in 2014, their first year in the WAC.The season concluded with a trip to the WAC Tournament championship game, but a loss to Sacramento State kept UVU from reaching its goal of getting to its first-ever NCAA Regional.

"The fall was really good. I felt like our guys were motivated with the way the season ended last year," said head coach Eric Madsen, who enters his seventh year at UVU this spring.

"Having a chance to be in the Championship game but not finding a way to get to a regional was disappointing to us. If you look at how our season went, aside from the tournament, we were just  average. And we've got to become better than average, we want to be great. So I can see 100 percent why we were picked in the middle of the conference."
 
"Sometimes I think about those losses and think about how close we were so its just a motivator overall," said senior outfielder Kade Andrus.

"It's been really motivating," Mark Krueger, a junior first-baseman said. "We've got a lot of guys returning from last year. We really want to work hard. Guys have worked ten times harder than we did last year just to get back to that tournament, win the tournament and go to a regional and make history."

The group of returning position players includes Krueger, who D1baseball.com named its preseason WAC Player of the Year last week. The junior first-baseman was also picked to the preseason All-WAC team by the league's coaches.

Krueger hit .306 with seven home runs last year and spent the summer in the Alaska Baseball League, playing for the Anchorage Bucs. During the summer, he hit .338 -- finishing fourth in the league -- with five home runs, 10 doubles, 4 triples and 31 runs batted in.
Also among the cast of returning position players are Craig Brinkerhoff, who led the team with 21 doubles, and Andrus, who peaked at the WAC Tournament in Mesa and expects to have a big senior season.

"I finished strong," said Andrus. "I was able to figure out a lot of things in baseball that I think will help me a lot this season. I struggled for the majority of the first part (of the season) but in that I learned a lot about myself and a lot about my swing and some realities about me as a baseball player that I've been able to grow from. So I feel like I'm extremely prepared for this season."

"We have some guys that carried us down the stretch with Krueger and Seth Rhineer," Madsen said. "Kade had a terrific fall and has made a lot of changes. We have Brinkerhoff back in the lineup again as well as Greyson Bogden. There's a core group that has been very solid for us and over the fall did things really well and we saw some improvement in what we're doing."

On the mound the Wolverines will have to replace starters Andrew Freter and Ryan Evans, but have Danny Beddes back, who was a second-team All-WAC selection as a sophomore.

"The pitching side is definitely something we feel is going to be a little better strength for us," Madsen said. "There are some unknowns, obviously, but we have some guys that have some experience in Chad Michaud, Kyle Valgardson and Braden Poole out of the bullpen. Those guys have been good for us and can be in different roles."

The league's coaches picked the Wolverines to finish fifth in the preseason poll, with defending champions Sacramento State the clear pick to defend its championship and regional bid.

The conference tournament will again take place in Mesa, Arizona. This year it will be held at newly remodeled Hohokam Park, the Spring Training home of the Oakland A's with the league's top six teams qualifying for a berth.
"I like this group. I think they want to go at it with some desire to be champions so I think it's a good motivating factor for us to know the quality of teams and try and get better," said Madsen.

"We have very high expectations of us from the coaching staff. They believe in us, they want a lot out of us and that makes us work harder. We really want to go to that regional so in the offseason we've worked really hard just to get to where we are right now," Krueger said.