Big South Announces 2023 Preseason Baseball Poll & Honors
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (www.BigSouthSports.com) – Four-time defending regular-season champion
Campbell University has been voted the Big South Conference’s preseason 2023 baseball favorite by the league’s head coaches, it was announced today by the Conference office. In addition, the coaches voted Campbell infielder
Drake Pierson (San Diego, Calif.) the conference’s Preseason Player of the Year and Camels’ hurler
Cade Kuehler (Waxhaw, N.C.) the league’s Preseason Pitcher of the Year.
The Camels, last year’s Tournament Champion, are the preseason favorite for the fifth consecutive year. Campbell was the conference regular-season champion in 2022 with a 20-3 record (41-19 overall), earned the Big South’s automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals last May, and recorded a victory in the NCAA postseason for the third consecutive tournament. Campbell received six first-place votes and 93 total points to win the league title in 2023.
USC Upstate received two first-place voteseand was second in the preseason poll with 88 points, while
High Point finished in the third spot with 68 points.
Gardner-Webb was fourth with 65 points, ahead of fifth-place
UNC Asheville’s 49 points.
Longwood was sixth in the voting with 46 points, while
Charleston Southern, the 2022 Tournament Runner-up, received one first-place nod and finished seventh with 44 points.
Presbyterian College followed in the eighth spot with 42 points, with
Winthrop in the ninth position (30 points).
Radford finished 10th in the voting with 25 points and the remaining first-place vote.
Pierson was named a 2023 Preseason All-American by Collegiate Baseball earlier this month. He led both Campbell and the Big South in home runs (19), triples (4), RBI (63) and total bases (154) en route to First-Team All-Conference honors in 2022. Pierson made a team-high 59 starts last year and slashed .333/.449/.703 overall, and was second in the league in runs scored (63), slugging, OPS, and HBP (21). He had a team-high 16 multi RBI games, drove in 3+ runs eight times, had three multi-home run games and swiped 18 bags. Pierson batted .438 in conference play while playing all 23 league games and was first or second in league play in all slash categories. His consistency helped him string together an 18-game hit streak and 36-game reached base streak during the year. Pierson received eight first-place votes and 23 points in the preseason voting.
Kuehler, who competed with the USA Collegiate National Team this past summer, was named a 2023 Preseason All-American honoree by Perfect Game. A Second-Team All-Big South and All-Tournament Team selection last season, Kuehler set a program record with 111 strikeouts in 2022, coming in just 84.0 innings of work. The righty posted a Big South-best .184 batting average against, allowed more than three earned runs just twice -- one of them being against No. 1 Tennessee in an outing where he struck out 10. Kuehler fanned 10 batters six times on the year, including in each of his final four starts that featured appearances at East Carolina, the Big South Championship Tournament and NCAA Regional. He made 16 appearances with 15 starts, a 4-6 record, 4.07 ERA and was 14th in the nation in hits allowed per nine at 6.11. His only relief appearance was a big one, where he escaped a bases-loaded jam with a 1-2-3 double play to preserve a 3-2 lead over Charleston Southern in the Big South championship game. Kuehler received six first-place votes and 24 points in the voting, ahead of High Point’s
Sam Garcia (one first-place vote and 14 points).
The 2023 baseball season begins Friday, Feb. 17, and the first Big South conference weekend is March 17-19. The top four teams in the final conference standings will advance to the Big South Baseball Championship, which will be held May 25-27 at Truist Point in High Point, N.C. The champion receives the Big South's automatic bid to the NCAA Championship.
2023 BIG SOUTH BASEBALL PRESEASON POLL
| Rk - School (first-place votes) |
Points |
| 1 - Campbell (6) |
93 |
| 2 - USC Upstate (2) |
88 |
| 3 - High Point |
68 |
| 4 - Gardner-Webb |
65 |
| 5 - UNC Asheville |
49 |
| 6 - Longwood |
46 |
| 7 - Charleston Southern (1) |
44 |
| 8 - Presbyterian College |
42 |
| 9 - Winthrop |
30 |
| 10 - Radford (1) |
25 |
Note: points are based on a weighted system, with first-place votes receiving 10 points, followed by 9 points for second-place, and so on.