July 28, 2010
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By Brian Ormiston
UCFAthletics.com
ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - As UCF baseball begins to look ahead towards fall camp and the 2011 spring campaign, it picked up a few more awards this week. Third baseman Chris Taladay was selected as the SEBaseball.com 2010 Conference USA Freshman of the Year, while the website also named associate head coach Cliff Godwin as the C-USA Assistant Coach of the Year.
Taladay was one of several freshmen on the UCF roster that contributed in more ways than one in 2010. The league's coaches voted him as the C-USA Freshman of the Year, while relief pitcher Joe Rogers and catcher/DH Ryan Breen joined Taladay as Freshman All-Americans.
But Taladay stood out with his .352 average, eight homers and 47 RBI. He led all C-USA freshmen at the end of the regular season with 19 doubles, 117 total bases and .960 OPS.
And helping to contribute to the offense's amazing performance last spring was Godwin, who turned UCF into a machine at the plate. The Knights ranked 11th in the nation with a .343 team batting average and 19th with a .538 slugging percentage, both of which were school records. Speaking of breaking records, the .343 average at the dish ranked first in C-USA history.
SEBaseball.com also announced that senior outfielders Chris Duffy and Shane Brown represented UCF on the All-C-USA First Team, and Taladay grabbed a spot on the second team. Duffy was the lone C-USA student-athlete to be one of five finalists for the USA Baseball Golden Spikes Award, which is given to the top amateur player in the country. He shattered C-USA records with a .447 batting average and an .850 slugging percentage en route to breaking the UCF record with 21 homers in just 55 games.
Brown, meanwhile, ranked fourth in the country with a .541 on-base percentage and claimed 18th with a .428 batting average. He along with Duffy were selected as All-Americans in 2010 by multiple outlets, and they are both now suiting up in the minor leagues after being taken in the MLB Draft in June.