The 2009 college baseball season is just around the corner for the Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) Sea Lions when they open the regular season with a three-game series against Faulk-ner University (Alabama) at Carroll B. Land Stadium during the weekend of Jan. 30-31. PLNU will open the Golden State Athletic Conference (GSAC) schedule against arch-nemesis Azusa Pacific University on Feb. 7. “We are getting our entire starting outfield, the right side of our infield and the majority of our pitching staff back with the exception of Robbie Nagele,” said PLNU head baseball coach Joe Schaeffer. The Sea Lions took fourth place in the highly competitive GSAC last season with a 20-16 league record and a 28-23 overall record. PLNU played well enough to qualify for the post-season in 2008. The Sea Lions enter the 2009 campaign with Schaeffer as their new skipper. Despite being the new head coach, Schaeffer is no stranger to the Point Loma baseball program after spending six years with the Sea Lions and the previous three seasons as associate head coach under Jack Northam. “I’ve been here as the associate head coach so I’m not nervous about being the head coach this year,” Schaeffer said. “It is really more of a change in title because I’ll be doing the same things that I’ve been doing the past three years.” Prior to serving as associate head coach. Schaeffer played for the Sea Lions baseball team in 2002 and 2003. Northam will now serve as the associate head coach. PLNU pitching guru John Gunther also returns after he provided much-needed leadership to the young, inexperienced pitching staff in 2008. Gunther has worked for almost four decades as a pitching coach at the high school and college level all over San Diego, including stops at Mesa College, the University of California, San Diego and the University of San Diego as well as Kearny Mesa High School and Point Loma High School. With at least three very successful teams in the Sea Lions’ conference, one of the questions heading into this season is whether PLNU can bridge the gap between the GSAC powers and finish higher than fourth place — or whether they fall back with the rest of the pack in the 10-team GSAC. “I think on paper we are very comparable with those teams and am very confident going in that we can improve this season with some of the holes we’ve been able to fill,” Schaeffer said. The teams that finished ahead of PLNU in the GSAC standings were Azusa Pacific (46-12, 29-7), Fresno Pacific (36-14, 26-10) and Biola University (35-18, 23-13). PLNU will have nine returning seniors: Kaohi Downing, Mike Miles, Andrew Bovich, Chris Honer, Jayson Swen, Jon Tierney, Scott Isbell, Kurt Steinhauer and Drew Bernhard. Downing was named to All-GSAC honors and was the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Region II, NAIA All-American and Rawlings Gold Glove winner last year. “I believe we will also have a fine offensive team this year. Last year we struggled with executing pitches and picking up runs in the late innings,” Schaeffer said. “We also had a lot of inexperience at key positions.”