Bisgounis Earns Honorable Mention All-Ping! Freshman Honors
6/10/2008 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
June 10, 2008
Freshman Keith Bisgounis (Oviedo, Fla./Oviedo) became the first baseball player in school history to earn a Division I national honor, Pingbaseball.com announced on Tuesday morning, as the rookie outfielder earned an honorable mention slot on the All-Ping! Freshman team.
After Bisgounis started the season in a 1-for-25 slump, the outfielder was one of the most consistent hitters in the Spartan lineup, going hitless in just nine of 34 games and hitting .347 (42-for-121) during the rest of the season. He finished the year with a .295 average, 24 RBIs, a team-leading 11 doubles, 43 hits and 27 runs.
The former Florida All-State prep star was red hot in April and May, as he went 23-for-60 (.383) with 11 runs and 11 RBIs in his last 16 games to finish second on the Spartans with seven three-hit games. In Atlantic Sun Conference play, he led the team in runs scored (18) and was second in RBIs (17) and fourth in batting average (.283).
Perhaps his biggest impact on the Spartans, though, was his late game prowess. On March 29, he scored the game-winning, walk-off run from second base on a single in ninth inning of 5-4 win against Jacksonville, knocking the ball away from the catcher at the plate. On April 19, playing against eventual A-Sun champion Lipscomb, he outdid himself. With the bases loaded and down 4-1 in the first game, he hit a three-run game-tying triple in the eighth inning before scoring the winning run in a 9-5 win. In the second game of the doubleheader, he deposited a two-out, two-run single into right field to give Upstate a decisive 5-4 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Upstate, which finished 25-29 overall and 17-16 in the Atlantic Sun, finished over .500 in conference play for the first time since then-USC Spartanburg went 12-6 in the NAIA District Six in 1990. It finished tied for fifth in the conference and would have qualified for the six-team Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament field, but it is still in the first of its four years in the provisionary process in the transition to Division I, making it ineligible for postseason play.
