May 21, 2007

QUEENS, N.Y. - At its annual postseason banquet on Monday evening, the BIG EAST Conference announced its all-conference teams and major award winners. Senior starting pitcher Mike Loree (Gillette, N.J.) earned All-BIG EAST recognition for the first time in his career and was placed on the second team, while junior infielder Derek Shunk (Yardley, Pa.) was selected for the third team. The banquet was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Queens on the eve of the first day of play at the BIG EAST Championship.

This season Loree showed the form that has enabled him to be a four-year member of Villanova's weekend starting rotation. He has anchored the staff with 13 starts and leads the team in wins, innings pitched and complete games. His seven victories match the highest single-season total by a Wildcat pitcher in the last 12 years and he has pitched at least into the seventh inning nine times. During the year, Loree broke both the school and BIG EAST Conference career innings pitched records. In addition, Loree moved into third place in school history in career victories and fifth in strikeouts.

Overall, Loree is 7-3 with a 4.08 ERA in 90 1/3 innings pitched. He will take the mound for Villanova on Tuesday morning against Louisville when the Wildcats play their first postseason game in 10 years. Loree pitched a four-hit shutout over the Cardinals earlier this season, winning 1-0 at the Villanova Ballpark at Plymouth when the Wildcats scored an unearned run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Loree currently needs just five innings pitched to tie the single-season Villanova record.

Loree's contributions to the pitching staff have been matched on the offensive end by Shunk, who led the BIG EAST in batting average for much of the season. He finished the regular season with a .372 batting average. Shunk leads the team in runs scored, hits, doubles, walks and on-base percentage for the year. He set the tone early in the season with a 12-game hitting streak during which he batted a remarkable .558 (29-for-52).

Derek Shunk was named a third team All-BIG EAST selection at the league's annual postseason banquet on Monday night.

During the year, Shunk moved into the top 10 in school history in career hits, marking the first changes to the top-10 list since the end of the 2002 season. He currently ranks eighth all-time at Villanova with 204 hits and needs just 38 more to tie the all-time record of 242. For the year, Shunk has reached base at a .458 clip and owns a .492 slugging percentage with 12 doubles, three triples and two home runs. He has scored 49 runs and driven in 34, while drawing 28 walks and stealing seven bases in as many tries.

The major award winners at Monday night's banquet included Player of the Year (Todd Frazier, Rutgers), Pitcher of the Year (Zack Pitts, Louisville), Rookie of the Year (Justin Marks, Louisville) and Coach of the Year (Ed Blankmeyer, St. John's).

The selections for the first, second and third teams embodied the competitiveness and balance in the league this season. In a conference where none of the eight conference tournament seeds were decided until the final weekend of the regular season, three of the league's top-10 hitters wound up as third team All-BIG EAST selections.

While Loree and Shunk led the pitching staff and offense respectively, the Wildcats success during the season was made possible by the balanced contributions received throughout the roster. After beginning the year with a 13-14 record and 3-6 conference mark, Villanova surged to finish the regular season by winning 15 of its last 24 games overall and going 9-9 to finish the conference schedule.

The Wildcats claimed their 10th BIG EAST Championship berth and first since 1997 by finishing in sixth place in the conference standings. Villanova will play in the very first game of the tournament when it faces No. 3 seed Louisville on Tuesday at 10 a.m. The winner of that game will play the winner of the game between No. 2 Rutgers and No. 7 Notre Dame on Wednesday at 5 p.m. The losers of each game play on Wednesday at 10 a.m.