MIAMI - The wire-to-wire manner in which Louisiana's Ragin' Cajun baseball team led the Sun Belt Conference this season wasn't lost on the league coaches.
The nine league coaches voted a total of nine Cajun players onto the All-Sun Belt Conference team - three on the first team, six on the second team - announced Tuesday night at a banquet that kicked off activities for the conference tournament that begins today at Florida International's University Park Field.
Pitcher Austin Faught, third baseman Dallas Morris and shortstop Micah Cockrell were picked to the first team, with Cockrell tabbed as the utility player due to his part-time mound work.
On the second team were pitcher Kevin Ardoin, first baseman Phillip Hawke, second baseman Justin Merendino, outfielders John Coker and Josh Landry and designated hitter Jonathan Lucroy. All are seniors except for the junior Landry and the freshman Lucroy.
"The individual awards are nice," said Cajun coach Tony Robichaux, "but they don't mean a lot as far as our goals. We've got nine or 10 of them, and the only one that really means something is the one that we went and got as a team as conference champions. The guys that won the awards know that we wouldn't have won the big one if it hadn't been for their teammates."
Robichaux also was named winner of the Ron Maestri Coach of the Year award, an honor he hadn't won since 1997 when he led the Cajuns to their first-ever Sun Belt regular-season title and to their first NCAA Tournament trip in four years.
The rest of the story
Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com