NEW LOOK COUGARS OPEN 2024 AT UTAH TECH
Washington State opens the 2024 season under new head coach Nathan Choate with a four-game series at Utah Tech in St. George, Utah. Friday's opening day is set for 3:05 p.m. (PT), a Saturday doubleheader is scheduled for 11:05 a.m. (PT) and Sunday's finale is set for 11:05 a.m. (PT).

PROBABLE STARTERS
Grant Taylor | Sr. | RHP | 3-4, 6.43 ERA, 55 K, 56.0 IP   vs.   Dylan Gardner | Jr. | RHP | 0-0, 11.12 ERA, 4 K, 5.2 IP (ASU) 
Spencer Jones | Sr. | LHP | 1-0, 5.05 ERA, 35 K, 35.2 IP   vs.   Evan Vasiliou | RS-So. | LHP | 1-3, 7.52 ERA, 21 K, 20.1 IP 
OR Connor Wilford | Sr. | RHP | 2-2, 2 SV, 5.32 ERA, 47 K, 45.2 IP   vs.   Carston Herman | Jr. | LHP | 2-8, 9.35 ERA, 49 K, 52.0 IP
Duke Brotherton | Sr. | RHP | 2-0, 5.82 ERA, 14 K, 17.0 IP   vs.   Ky Decker | RS-Jr. | RHP | NA 

FOLLOW ALONG
Links to live stats and webstreams for this weekend are listed on wsucougars.com.

ON DECK
The Cougars head to the Karbach Round Rock Classic in Texas weekend, facing Kentucky Friday, Kansas Saturday and Texas State Sunday. WSU will stay in the lone star state for Tuesday even matchup at fifth-ranked TCU.

THIS WEEK IN COUGAR BASEBALL PODCAST
Every Wednesday a new episode of This Week in Cougar Baseball Podcast presented by Coors Light will be released featuring head coach Nathan Choate, a member of the Cougar Baseball program and the host, Matt Chazanow.

NATHAN CHOATE NAMED COUGAR BASEBALL HEAD COACH
Nathan Choate was named the 18th head baseball coach in program history this past June. Choate arrived at WSU after leading Loyola Marymount to a 2023 West Coast Conference title while guiding the Lions to new heights in his four seasons leading the program. Choate was named the 2023 WCC Coach of the Year after leading LMU to their first outright regular season title in 25 years. He coached a pair of Lions to All-America honors while five players earned All-WCC honors in addition to the WCC Pitcher of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year. Choate's 2023 LMU club tallied road wins at Vanderbilt and Oklahoma State while in the classroom, the Lions posted a 3.18 team GPA including 24 players with a 3.0 or higher. Throughout his coaching career, Choate has accumulated 28 players selected in the MLB Draft, seven of which went in the top-10 rounds, 10 All-Americans, two Col[1]lege World Series appearances, three Team USA pitchers, four Fresh[1]man All-Americans, two Big West Freshman Pitchers of the Year, two WCC Pitchers of the Year and nine All-Conference Pitchers. "My family and I couldn't be more excited to join the Washington State University family. Thank you to President Schulz, Pat Chun and Mitch Straub for the opportunity to lead the baseball program," Choate said. We look forward to earning the respect of past, current, and future Cougs, as well as the Pullman Community. Go Cougs!"

WSU SET TO PLAY IN ROUND ROCK CLASSIC
Washington State will play in the 2024 Karbach Round Rock Classic in Texas next week. Peak Events, LLC, in partnership with Karbach Brewing Company, Go Round Rock and the Round Rock Express, are excited to announce the 2024 Karbach Round Rock Classic is set to return February 23-25 to Dell Diamond. The Cougars are scheduled to play Kentucky (Friday, Feb. 24), Kansas (Saturday, Feb. 25) and Texas State (Sunday, Feb. 26). WSU is 3-0 all-time against Kentucky, last meeting twice in 2002 at the Texas A&M continental Express Classic in College Station. The Cougars claimed their only meeting with Kansas, 8-5 at the Pac-12/Big 12 Challenge in Arizona. WSU is 3-4 all-time against Texas State and last met in 2016 for a four-game series in San Marcos, Texas. The 2024 Karbach Round Rock Classic will again host four teams over three days of play at Dell Diamond in Round Rock, TX, home of the Texas Rangers' Triple A affiliate, the Round Rock Express. The weekend tournament will have two games per day with each team playing the other, three times in a round robin format.  Tickets can be purchased on a day by day basis which includes both games played on the same day or as a weekend package in select seating sections with both reserved and general admission seating options available. Tickets are available at KarbachRRC.com. 

COUGARS TO PLAY 15 GAMES ON PAC-12 NETWORKS
WSU will play 15 games on the Pac-12 Networks in 2024. The five Pac-12 Conference series televised will be the Cougars most televised games since 2017. The final weekend of March will see Washington State head to Seattle for The Boeing Apple Cup Series against Washington set for a Thursday-Saturday series, March 28-30. The next three home conference series will be televised; California (April 12-14), Oregon State (May 3-5), USC (May 10-12). The final weekend of the regular season will see the Cougars head to Eugene for a Thursday-Saturday (May 16-18) series on the Pac-12 Networks.

IN THE CLASSROOM, IN THE COMMUNITY
- Last fall, WSU posted a semester team GPA (3.32) the highest team GPA in program history and has set a program record with a 3.23 cumulative team GPA
- This past fall, WSU partnered with WSU ROAR to host a Lentil Cookoff for third straight year. WSU ROAR is a two-year postsecondary education program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

INSIDE THE NUMBERS
2801 - WSU's 2,801 all-time wins are 13th-most in NCAA history, 5th-most in the Pac-12
29 - WSU's 29 wins last season were the most in 2015, notched fourth straight winning season
9 - Chase Grillo's 9 career saves are 1 away from breaking into the WSU all-time Top-10 for saves
2 - 2 Cougars finished last season in the Major Leagues; 
      RHP Ian Hamilton (Yankees), RHP Ryan Walker (Giants)

LAST SEASON
Washington State finished the season with a 29-23 overall record including a 10-19 mark in Pac-12 Conference play. The 29 wins were the most since 2015 and marked the fourth-straight winning season after posting series wins at No. 15 Oregon State, No. 12 UCLA, Arizona, Santa Clara, at California and season series win over Gonzaga. The Cougars led the Pac-12 in hit-by-pitch (91), were third in stolen bases (70) and hit the 10th-most home runs in WSU history while the pitching staff was second in the league averaging 10.2 strikeouts/9 innings. 

GRILLO ONE OF THREE COUGARS NAMED ACADEMIC ALL-DISTRICT IN 2023
Three Cougars were named to the Academic All-District Team by the College Sports Communicators. Pitcher Chase Grillo earned his first career academic honor after posting a 3.74 grade point average while graduating with a bachelor's degree in social sciences. 

COUGAR BASEBALL RETURNED TO TOP-25 FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2010
In mid March last season, Washington State Baseball returned to the National Top-25 for the first time since 2010, appearing at No. 20 in the March 13 Collegiate Baseball Poll after taking two for three at No. 15 Oregon State the previous weekend. The Cougars took two of three in Corvallis for their first series win in Corvallis since 2009. The Cougars finished the 2010 season ranked No. 21 by Collegiate Baseball and No. 24 by Baseball America. The Collegiate Baseball Newspaper poll, which started in 1959, was the oldest college baseball poll.

COUGAR COACHING STAFF
Joe Perez begins his first season as the Cougars Assistant Coach/Recruiting Coordinator and will serve as the infield coach and assist with the hitters after working the previous eight seasons as the Associated Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Central Arizona College, one of the premier junior college programs in the country, where worked with the infielders and hitters. Perez, the 2021 ABCA National Assistant Coach of the Year, helped the Vaqueros to a pair of Junior College National Championships, three Western District titles, two Region I Championships and three ACCAC Conference Championships. Prior to his time at Central Arizona, Perez spent four seasons at Grand Canyon University where he worked with Choate for  Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz assisting with Infielders.

Quinn Hawksworth begins his first season as a assistant coach and will work with the Cougar hitters and assist with recruiting, after working the past three seasons at CSU Bakersfield competing in the Big West Conference. Hawksworth joined CSU Bakersfield Baseball prior to the 2021 season where he worked with hitters, infielders and recruiting before being promoted to recruiting coordinator following the 2022 season. Hawksworth went to Bakersfield after spending the 2020 season in a volunteer position at Big West Conference power, UC Santa Barbara where he coached hitters and infielders for the Gauchos, helping UCSB to a 13-2 mark during the shortened 15-game season on the strength of 37 extra-base hits and ten home runs.

Eric Hutting begins his first season as the Cougars Assistant Coach and will work with the catchers while assisting with the pitchers and hitters after working the past two seasons with Choate at Loyola Marymount as an assistant coach, working with the catchers and assisting with the LMU hitters. Hutting helped Loyola Marymount to a 2023 West Coast Conference title last season while  the Lions captured the West Coast Conference Pitcher of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Freshman of the Year and Choate was named WCC Coach of the Year. LMU claimed its first outright regular season title in 25 years with a 29-24 mark including an impressive 21-6 record in conference play while a pair of Lions earned All-America honors with five players receiving All-WCC honors. 

Brandon Vial begins his first season as the Cougars Director of Player Development after working the past two seasons as an assistant coach at Lewis-Clark State College, helping coach the pitchers and catchers as the Warriors reached the NAIA National Championship game in 2022 and 2023. The 2022 LC pitching staff finished the season second in the NAIA with a 3.21 ERA. In the summer of 2022, Vial was the head coach of the Walla Walla Sweets in the West Coast Summer League while in the 2021 summer, Vial was named the Northwoods League Coach of the Year after leading the St. Cloud Rox pitching staff to a record-setting summer.
 
Austin Ames begins his first season as the Director of Baseball Operations after working the 2023 summer as an operations intern at Team USA in North Carolina and as an operations intern for Major League Baseball at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Florida. Prior to working with MLB, Ames was a ticket sales associate for the St. Louis Cardinals during the 2022 season and worked in a number of roles for the Southeast Missouri State Athletic Department (2020-22). Ames earned his bachelor's degree in sport management from Southeast Missouri State in 2023.

JOHN OLERUD NAMED PAC-12 PLAYER OF THE CENTURY
The Pac-12 Conference inducted Coug legend John Olerud into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor in 2019. Olerud was named the Pac-12 Conference's Baseball Player of the Century in 2016. During his three seasons in a Cougar uniform, Olerud (1987-89) had one of the finest careers of any Cougar student-athlete, in any sport, in Washington State history, rewriting the WSU record books and becoming the only Cougar baseball athlete ever to be named College Athlete of the Year. In 1988, Olerud became the only player in NCAA history to win 15 games on the mound and hit 20 home runs in the same season, going 15-0 with 23 home runs that year. Olerud went 26-4 overall with a 3.17 ERA over 241.1 innings during his three seasons, hitting .434. He set two Pac-10 records and 10 Pac-10 North marks, highlighted by his sophomore season when he was named Athlete of the Year by Baseball America. In January prior to his junior year at WSU, Olerud suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a type of brain seizure. He missed the first 28 games of the spring season, but returned to hit .359 for WSU over the final 27 games. Prior to his senior season, Olerud signed a contract with Toronto and went directly to the Major Leagues. In 1993, he became the first Blue Jay to win a batting title, hitting .363. Olerud played for Toronto, the New York Mets and Yankees, Seattle and Boston during his 17-year career, winning back-to-back World Series titles with Toronto in 1992 and 1993. In 2001 he joined his father, John Sr., in the WSU Athletics Hall of Fame, and is a member of the College Baseball, State of Washington and Inland Northwest Sports Halls of Fame. The John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award, given annually by the College Baseball Hall of Fame, was named in his honor and in 2016, he was named the Pac-12 Conference Player of the Century.