By: Brian Vaughn
   Second year Bulldog baseball head coach Craig Jones returns six starters from his 20-6 first season. The first item up for Coach Jones is to find replacements for his graduated ace pitchers from last season Micah Spahn and Brandon Dunn.
   Cory Allison and Mark Leon look to be the go too pitchers this season. They each went 4-2 pitching last season and Coach Jones looks to build off that. Justin Fuchs, Daniel Stegall and Justin Brewer look to round out the pitching rotation.
   "We've got 5 guys throwing over 80 right now," said Coach Jones. "That's always good to see that velocity this early, you always expect them to gain a little more as the year goes on."
   Greenwood also returns all conference catcher Casey Benincosa behind home plate.
   "We lost a lot of power, but defensively we're going to be pretty strong, especially up the middle," said Coach Jones. "We've got our catcher back, both middle infielders and center fielder back, that's always a good sign. Summer helped us a little, just keeping our kids together and we hope to grow off that."
   A number of improvements were made to Bulldog Field recently getting ready for the season including a new blue metal outfield fence providing by Farmers Bank. "We're proud of that fence, it's beautiful. I smile every time I walk out there," said Coach Jones.
   Coach Jones feels very lucky to have the multi-purpose building which houses the baseball teams batting cages for the team to practice in out of the cold weather.
   "There's a lot of teams that haven't had any indoor places to work out. We've been lucky we get to go inside and workout"
   Coach Jones expects the AAAA-West to once again be a tough conference for baseball with Harrison and Morrilton returning a number of starters with Alma always being tough in baseball. Greenbrier the conference champions from last season graduated a lot of starters, but Coach Jones don't expect them to be down very much from that.
   "Coach Terry will have them ready," said Coach Jones speaking of Greenbriers head coach.
   The Diamond 'Dogs start their 2004 season on Thursday, February 26th at home against AAAAA-West Springdale.

Expectations High For 2004 Diamond Dogs

Copyright © GreenwoodDogPound.com All Rights Reserved.
No portion of this website maybe reproduced without the permission of GreenwoodDogPound.com.
The Dog Pound is a fan based website.
The views expressed on this site are the sole views
of the fans known as the Dog Pound and other fans and are not those of the Greenwood Public Schools, Administrators, Coaches, or Students.
This site is not maintained or apart of the Greenwood Public Schools.
Contact the webmaster: webmaster@greenwooddogpound.com