<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
From LBSU reports<\/span><\/p>\n One year after finishing the regular season as co-Big West Champions, and fielding a young, draft-depleted squad, Long Beach State was picked to finish fourth in the conference in 2009. The Big West Preseason Poll was released by the conference office today, with Long Beach State picking up one first-place vote.<\/p>\n \n Cal State Fullerton was the runaway winner in the preseason poll, receiving seven first-place votes and picking up 78 total points. UC Irvine was behind the Titans, followed by UC Santa Barbara and The Beach. Cal Poly, UC Riverside and UC Davis were next with Cal State Northridge and Pacific rounding out the list as voted on by the conference’s nine head coaches.<\/p>\n Long Beach State’s drop in the polls is due to the loss of 11 players to the MLB draft, a record haul for the Dirtbags. However, the team returns a pair of position starters in outfielder Jonathan Jones and first baseman Steve Tinoco, and brings back two former starting pitchers in sophomore Jake Thompson and senior Manny McElroy, who missed all but one game in 2008 due to injury.<\/p>\n The 49ers season kicks off with Alumni Weekend from February 12-14. The Leadoff Dinner, featuring keynote speaker Troy Tulowitzki starts the weekend off on the 12th at 8 p.m. at The Grand, followed by the 8th annual alumni golf tournament on the 13th, and the alumni game and intrasquad scrimmage at Blair Field on the 14th. The preseason doubleheader gets started at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n The regular season starts off on February 20, with Long Beach State’s home opener coming the next day, February 21 at 2 p.m. against USC.<\/p>\n 2009 Coaches Poll Results<\/b><\/p>\n 1. Cal State Fullerton (7) – 78<\/p>\n 2. UC Irvine – 67<\/p>\n 3. UC Santa Barbara – 65<\/p>\n 4. Long Beach State – 55<\/p>\n 5. Cal Poly – 45<\/p>\n 6. UC Riverside – 41<\/p>\n 7. UC Davis – 26<\/p>\n 8. Cal State Northridge – 19<\/p>\n 9. Pacific – 9<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One year after finishing the season as co-Big West Champs, Long Beach State was picked to finish fourth in the conference in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}