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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 23, 2015)
THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015 I SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 I © 2015 STUDENT MEDIA I ©THEBATTONLINE Vanessa Pefia —THE BATTALION GAMING No. 2 A&M to meet now-No. 1 LSD in series showdown Thursday By Andre Perrard fter winning its mid-week contest against UT-Arling- ton on Tuesday afternoon, I the Aggie baseball team now faces its tallest task of the season thus far. No. 2 A&M will travel to Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. to take on the newly appointed No. 1 LSU Ti gers in a pivotal SEC weekend series. The Aggies and Tigers are tied atop the SEC, and the winner of this series will have sole possession of first place in the VIEWS conference. Also, the winner will likely garner the No. 1 ranking in the country come Monday morning. LSU has won 10 of the last 13 meetings, but the series is tied 3-3 since A&M joined the SEC. The Tigers (35-6, 12-5 SEC) have one of the league’s most prolific offens es. Connor Hale leads the team with 36 RBIs, but three other players in the lineup also have well over 30 RBIs this season. Alex Bregman and Jared Foster are threats at the plate, both tallying eight home runs this year. Bregman is also a potential problem on the base path, going 24-for-28 on stolen base attempts this season. LSU leads the conference in batting average this season, posting a .320 team average so far. The Tigers have won 12 of their last 13 games, including a three-game sweep at Alabama. Texas A&M (36-5, 12-5 SEC) has an offensive powerhouse of its own. The Aggies lead the league with 47 home runs, and leading that charge is the hottest bat in the Aggie lineup, Lo gan Taylor. He has 10 home runs this year, but did not register a hit in the Tuesday win. A&M will need Taylor to keep hot in this series. Also on a streak is Nick Banks. The All-American has lived up to the hype this season, reaching base safely in all 40 games he has played, and has a pair of 13-game hitting streaks. Thursday evening, Aggie ace BASEBALL ON PC. 3 Vanessa Pefta — THE BATTALION Stephen Callaghan reviews previous League of Legend matches with teammates. League of Legends team LA. bound for finals 'The least I had, the most I could do' Muster takes on a deeper meaning for Hosts By Josh Hopkins Texas A&M’s League of ^ Legends team is poised to face off against three other North American teams in a battle for $180,000 in schol arships. After winning eight straight, Texas A&M’s League of Leg ends Team, Team Maroon, will be flown out to Los An geles to compete in the finals and given a chance to secure first place along with $30,000 in scholarships per player. League of Legends is a vid eo game in which two teams of five players battle across a map in a quest to destroy the opposing team’s base. Re leased in 2009, the game now boasts over 27 million players daily. This year, Riot Games, the developers of League of Legends, sponsored a North American collegiate tournament that awards the first-place team $180,000 in total scholarships. The second-place team will earn $15,000 per player, with the third and fourth place teams receiving $7,500 per player. The A&M team, Team MarSeoon, went undefeated through four rounds. Now the team is flying to Los An geles, the headquarters of Riot Games, to compete against three other schools on the big stage. Grant Hewitt, industrial engineering senior and team captain, said while the team is excited about going to Los Angeles, it intends to concen trate on winning. “Honesdy, we are going to have fun at the event, but we are there to play so that’s go ing to be our focus,” Hewitt said. “Playing on stage is go ing to be amazing, there is going to be a big crowd, and obviously there is going to be a big stream.” Stephen Callaghan, Eng- lish senior and coach, said the A&M League of Legends LEAGUE ON PG. 2 ADMINISTRATION Chancellor: VP resignation is extension of current protocol Vanessa Pefta — THE BATTALION Handwritten letters to families are a Muster Host's responsibility. John Rangel (S)johnrangell6 owdy, my name is John Rangel. I’m honored to be your Muster Host tonight.” The grieving family stared back at me and shook my hand. A few pleasantries were ex changed, tissues were fetched while a member cried, and we walked silendy to their seats. It wasn’t until I was back in the Muster Host room that I noticed my hands were shaking. It was the hardest 15 minutes of my college life. It also capped the best experience I could have as an Aggie. I applied to be a Muster Host out of a desire to give back to Texas A&M, but a large part of my application was also moti vated by simple curiosity. I had a personal link to each of A&M’s other traditions, but Muster remained a mystery; I’ve stood and swayed with the 12th Man at football games, grieved with friends at Silver Taps and dug MUSTER ON PG. 2 Q&A: Granger Smith talks music, A&M If you’ve heard of “We Bleed Maroon,” then you’ve heard of Granger Smith. The independent country musician, Class of 2002, has built up a large following unusual for unsigned artists. The Battalion’s Life & Arts editor Katie Canales spoke with Smith about where he’s headed with his music, his work with American soldiers and what it’s like being an Aggie in the country music world. THE BATTALION: What's next for you at the moment? SMITH: I have an EP coming out on May 4, which is the first time I've ever put out an EP, and then it's going to be followed by the fulMength album in the fall. So of course the album will include the songs from the EP but it kind of gives us the chance to do a long release and then also for me to con tinue to write songs and kind of tweak them for the album that comes out this coming fall. THE BATTALION: Your alter ego, Earl Dibbles Jr. — Is that just a stage name or is it another facet of yourself that you've brought to your music? SMITH: It's kind of both of those. For a while, we were making different videos to kind of show different exposures of the band and bring more people around to the music and there were several characters that I was putting on at the time and Earl Dibbles was just another one of these characters on YouTube Granger Smith, a country musician, is well known for his song, "We Bleed Maroon." and it went viral. And so we started chasing it, it started getting millions of views and I wanted to write a song for it and so I wrote a song called "The Country Boy Song" and then released a music video at the same time as the song came out and then that went viral. So by this time I figured this is some thing that's going to have to live on the stage and something that we're going SMITH ON PG. 4 University System Chancellor John Sharp speaks at the Feb. 12 Board of Regents meeting in College Station. By Bethany Irvine ^ In a move traditionally limited to uni- ^ versify provosts, Chancellor John Sharp has requested resignations from all A&M vice presidents and special advisers ahead of incoming A&M president Michael Young’s term. In a memo released Thursday, the vice presidents were asked to submit their resig nations to Young by May 1, 2015. In turn. Young is expected to accept or decline them by May 1, 2016. “Michael Young will get to spend a year or less, however long he feels he needs to, to work with all of these folks, and he might very well decide, ‘I love them all and I am going to keep them all,”’ Sharp said. Sharp said provost resignations are com mon before a new president comes into of fice. Sharp said his request for the resigna tion of vice presidents is an extension of this frequent action. “All of the vice presidents know that the new president could dismiss them on day one, not only by state, but by university rules, but by state laws,” Sharp said. “I don’t know if the vice presidents have been asked to formally offer their resignations, but I know that future presidents will hope that this will continue, formalizing a process that already exists.” Shane Hinckley, vice president of mar keting and communication and university spokesperson, said this decision is some thing expected among the president’s ex ecutive team. “It is generally understood that members of the president’s executive team — ex ecutive vice presidents, vice presidents and special assistants to the president, et cetera — serve at the pleasure of the president of Texas A&M,” Hinckley said. Hinckley said shifts in administration are VP RESIGNATIONS ON PG. 2 'Nw>