In advance of the 2018 season, the American Athletic Conference released the baseball coaches’ poll results on Thursday and UConn was slotted to finish second in the nine-team conference.
The Huskies, who received three first-place votes and 50 points, trailed only 2017 regular season co-champion Houston (59 points), who grabbed five first-place votes.
The other regular season co-champion, UCF (49 points) is just behind UConn and East Carolina (45 points) finished fourth.
USF (43 points) rounds out the top five and owns the final first-place vote.
Conference newcomer Wichita State (29 points) is placed sixth, while Memphis (19 points), Tulane (18 points) and Cincinnati (12 points) complete the poll.
The Huskies beat out some heavy hitters, including East Carolina and a UCF Knights team that won 40 games and returns a lot of talent, including preseason conference player of the year Rylan Thomas and four-all conference players, the most in the conference.
UConn has three players on the all-conference team, which is tied with USF for second--most.
Junior catcher Zac Susi was a unanimous selection after an outstanding sophomore season and strong summer for the Bourne Braves down on Cape Cod.
Susi had a slash line of .286 AVG/.362 OBP/.376 SLG in 57 games, leading the Huskies in starts (56). He was second in both hits (61) and RBI, with 40 as well. He added nine doubles, two triples and two home runs.
Projected Friday night starter, fellow junior Tim Cate, made the team as well. He was on the all-conference first team in 2017 after leading the Huskies in hits allowed (78) and earned runs (28). He struck out 102 batters, fourth in the conference.
Sophomore shortstop Anthony Prato rounds out the UConn players on the all-conference team. He was on the second team in 2017 and was a freshman All-American according to the NCBWA. He slashed .304/.376/.388 in his freshman campaign, including a .611 batting average in The American conference tournament.
UConn gets underway with their season on Feb. 16 against Kennesaw State.