May 31, 2016
ABCA: MARSHALL, Texas (5/31/16) – In just two days, East Texas Baptist University now has another All-American and three on the year as Conner Combs and Tyler Bates were voted onto the ABCA/Rawlings All-American second-team. It is the first time that ETBU has had an ABCA All-American since 2005 and is only the second time in program history producing ABCA All-Americans. On Thursday, Combs was named a D3baseball.com All-American on the third-team.
Combs is given his second All-American award this year and is the first player to be named an All-American twice in one season. He has earned the ASC “Player of the Year”, All-ASC first-team, ABCA All-West Region first-team, D3baseball.com All-West Region first-team, and CoSIDA Academic All-District first-team. He led the ASC in home runs with 15 and slugging percentage (.734) and is ranked in the top 10 in six different ASC categories. In other categories he is second in RBI (52) and total bases (116), fifth in stolen bases (20), sixth in batting average (.399) and ninth in hits (63). He finished with eight doubles and had six sacrifice at-bats. In the NCAA, he is fourth in home runs, sixth in home runs per game (.35), and 15th in slugging percentage.
Bates earns his first All-American award as an outfielder on the second-team. He has also earned ABCA All-West Region first-team, D3baseball.com All-West Region second-team, and All-ASC first-team. It was the third time in his career to be on an ABCA All-Region team, too, and earn an All-ASC first-team award. He finishes his career as the all-time hits leader at ETBU with 206 breaking the record in the ASC Tournament held by ABCA All-American Trey Luster. He led the ASC in runs scored (58) and total bases (133) and was second in hits (72), home runs (14) and RBI (55).
ETBU finished the year with 31 wins which was the most since 2005 and hosted the ASC Tournament Red Division side at Woods Field.
ETBU All-Americans
ABCA
2016: Conner Combs (2nd team), Tyler Bates (2nd team)
2005: Trey Luster (1st team)
D3baseball.com
2016: Conner Combs (3rd team)
NCCAA (National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association)
2001: Marty Mayfield
2000: Nathaniel Jordan, Jared Landry, Nathan Haas
1999: Greg Horton, Shane Stevens, Josh Scoggins