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South Easton, Mass. – The Franklin Pierce University Ravens are the unanimous pick to claim the 2009 Northeast-10 Baseball Regular Season title as voted by the conference’s 13 head coaches. The Ravens collected all 13 first-place votes for 169 points.

Franklin Pierce won their second straight Northeast-10 Championship last year on its way to a third-straight NCAA Division II Northeast Regional Championship. The Ravens finished the 2008 season with a 42-15 overall record, 20-10 in the NE-10, and an appearance in the NCAA Division II College World Series.

Southern Connecticut State University (36-19, 24-6 NE-10), picked to finish second in the Northeast-10, received 148 points in the poll followed by the University of Massachusetts Lowell (26-24, 18-12 NE-10) with 136 points. Pace University (31-23, 18-12 NE-10) received 134 points to finish fourth slightly behind UMass Lowell, while the University of New Haven (24-25, 17-10 East Coast Conference) is predicted to finish fifth in its first season as a member of the Northeast-10. The Chargers played in the East Coast Conference last year.

Bentley University (22-25, 17-13 NE-10) received 100 points are picked to finish sixth, followed by Stonehill College (25-22, 16-14 NE-10) at seventh (88) and Merrimack College (18-27, 13-17 NE-10) at eighth with 73 points. Assumption College (20-27, 10-20 NE-10) received 69 points and the College of Saint Rose (14-34, 9-21 NE-10) tallied 47 points to finish ninth and tenth respectively.

Saint Anselm College (15-28, 11-19 NE-10), Southern New Hampshire University (7-32, 5-25 NE-10) and American International College (11-27, 9-21 NE-10) round out the remainder of the poll.

The 2009 season is underway as Saint Rose traveled to Newberry College for a four-game series this past weekend. Bentley and Southern Connecticut will make trips down south starting on Saturday. The Falcons will face Rollins, while the Owls will travel to GCSU for a weekend series. The first NE-10 match up is slated for Friday, March 20 with New Haven traveling to UMass Lowell. The Northeast-10 Championship will begin Wednesday, May 6 with first round action and conclude with the three-day final four starting May 8 and concluding on May 10 with the championship final.

With 15 member institutions the Northeast-10 is the second largest NCAA Division II athletic conference in the nation. Its 23 championship sports provide athletic opportunities for over 5,500 student-athletes, the largest such program of any Division II conference.

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