SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Four Southern Conference players were named to the Capital One NCAA Division I Baseball Academic All-District First Team for District III, as selected by the Collegiate Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), it was announced Thursday afternoon by the organization.
Davidson senior center fielder Forrest Brandt, Elon junior outfielder Quinn Bower, UNCG senior third baseman Sean Guite and Western Carolina junior first baseman Jacob Hoyle all earned the distinction and will now be eligible for consideration for the Capital One Academic All-America team.
To be eligible for Academic All-America® consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director.
Davidson’s Brandt, a Raleigh, N.C., native and political science major, is enjoying a career season, leading the Wildcats and ranking in the top 10 in the SoCon with a .356 batting average and 40 RBIs. He also has a career-best nine home runs, which ranks second on the team and in a tie for fourth in the SoCon. Brandt has been named the SoCon Player of the Week once this season, and is now batting .305 with 13 homers and 105 RBIs for his career. He also has a team-best 10 stolen bases this season and has swiped 45 total in his career, ranking him seventh all-time in program history.
As a rookie, Brandt was named to the Louisville Slugger Freshman All-America Team and the SoCon All-Freshman Team.
Brandt is the 13th CoSIDA Academic All-District selection from Davidson in program history and the first since 2006 (Alex Entrekin). He’s also the first first-team selection since Tim Frend in 2002. Frend was then named to the Academic All-America Third Team.
Elon’s Bower is the first Phoenix baseball player to earn the honor since catcher Mike Melillo did so in 2010.
A native of New Cumberland, Pa., Bower sports a 3.86 GPA as a finance major and was an Academic All-Southern Conference honoree as a sophomore. On the field, Bower is second on the team with a .312 batting average and eight doubles in 44 games. He paces the Phoenix with 33 runs scored and 16 stolen bases this season. Bower has posted a .325 batting average with 18 runs scored, five doubles and six stolen bases in 21 league games.
Over the course of the 2014 campaign, he has tallied 20 multi-hit games, the second-best total on the team. Bower posted a career-best 11-game hit streak earlier this season, including a stretch of five games in a row with at least two hits. He is currently riding an eight-game hitting streak.
UNCG’s Guite currently boasts a 3.40 GPA as a sociology major.
Guite leads UNCG in batting average and ranks second in the Southern Conference with a .401 batting average. He also places inside the top five in the league in hits, runs scored and on-base percentage. On a national scale, Guite is 15th in runs scored per game, 22nd in batting average, 34th in runs scored and 38th in hits.
This season, Guite owns 18 multiple-hit performances, while he also put together a 13-game hitting streak from March 9 to April 12. In a March 15 contest against Princeton, Guite tied a program single-game record with six hits while also tallying five runs scored, two doubles and two triples.
Western Carolina’s Hoyle’s selection was the fifth among four different Catamount baseball players since 2002. He joins former Catamounts Tyler Kirkpatrick (2010), Tyler Sexton (2007-08) and Ryan Schade (2002), who each earned all-district honors. Schade is the most recent among six different Catamounts to earn Academic All-America recognition.
Entering the month of May, Hoyle holds a .320 seasonal batting average with 57 hits, including 18 for extra bases – five doubles and a SoCon-leading 13 home runs. His 13 round-trippers to date rank him tied for fourth nationally, while his home runs per game average of 0.30 per game is fifth nationally.
Hoyle is second on the Catamount squad with 41 RBIs, which ranks him tied for third in the league with a conference-pacing 101 total bases in 2014. Three of Hoyle’s four career multi-home run games have come this season. He held the team’s longest consecutive game hit streak at 15 earlier this season, and paces the squad with 19 multiple-hit games in 2014.
A product of Hickory, N.C., Hoyle boasts a cumulative grade point average of 3.55 while majoring in management. He was named to the 2013 Southern Conference Spring Academic All-Conference team and to the 2012-13 SoCon Honor Roll in his first year eligible as a sophomore last spring.