George Washington University

March 15, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC - Two GW baseball players were honored by the Atlantic 10 in the conferences weekly awards. Anthony Raglani (Indiana, PA/Indiana) and Anthony Smith (Katonah, NY/John Jay) were named the Atlantic 10's Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week respectively. This week's awards actually covered the first two weeks of March as the A-10 did not award honors last week due to the basketball tournaments. Raglani and Smith were the offensive fire that propelled the Colonials to a 7-2 record between March 1st and March 14th. At 9-8, the Colonials are above .500 for the first time this season while winning seven of their eight games at Barcroft Park.

Raglani hit four home runs and four doubles while batting .469 with a slugging percentage of .969 over the last two weeks. He scored in all but one game and had 18 runs during the week. He is currently riding a seven game hitting streak and had a hit in all but one game during the week including six multi-hit games. He had two games with two home runs against UMBC with four RBI and on Saturday against Cleveland State with five RBI. On Sunday he went one-for-one but had four runs as a result of reaching base three other times on walks.

The junior slugger has been on fire offensively this season after having a very successful summer in the Cape Cod League last year. Entering this year, Raglani was listed as 97th in this year's Major League Baseball Draft Class by Baseball America. He has also been recently featured on NYfansonly.com as a top MLB prospect for this year's draft.

Smith, the A-10's Rookie of the Week, has had an amazing two-week stretch at the plate driving in 23 runs while batting .545. He also generated 10 runs while hitting five home runs and five doubles. He now leads GW this season in batting average .480, in slugging percentage .880, in RBI 26, in homers five, in doubles five and in total bases 44. He is also an outstanding pitcher and earned a win against Vermont last weekend. He hits even when he pitches and otherwise he plays first base or is the designated hitter.

Smith was fantastic this past weekend collecting 16 RBI on 11 hits three of which were homers and three of which were doubles in the three game weekend series with Cleveland State. He had six doubles in two games and has a six game hitting streak going currently with a double or a home run in each of those six games. His 1.152 slugging percentage these past two weeks is off the charts. As the starting pitcher against Cleveland State on Friday, Smith was a triple shy of the cycle as a hitter adding two home runs to his double and hitting six RBI and scoring four times.

Most importantly Smith has been the main reason that GW has been 7-2 these past two weeks by winning games with his bat for the Colonials. On Sunday he tied the game with an RBI double and on Saturday he hit a solo game winning home run that put GW up for good. Last week he also was the main reason that GW won both weekend games.

Smith almost single handedly won both games of GW's doubleheader against Vermont. In the first game he pitched his way to his second career win and in the second game he hit a two-run pinch hit home run that won the game for the Colonials. Earlier in the week he hit the first home run of his career against Old Dominion to put GW ahead in the fourth inning with a solo shot. In the eighth inning of the same game he added a sacrifice fly that scored the eighth and final run against ODU in an 8-6 victory.

In his third career start, Smith threw six strikeouts in six innings for his second win of the year. He gave up three runs, two of which were earned on six hits and walked only one in the third start of his career. He struck out five in the first three innings including all three in the second. In the third he gave up two singles but picked off both runners, recording the last out on a complex run-down which was scored a 1-3-6-1-4-9 pick off with the right fielder tagging the runner out at first. Fellow freshman Derrik Lutz struck out three in three scoreless innings for his first save in relief for Smith who stayed in the game as the designated hitter.