CCU pitcher named an All-American by Collegiate Baseball

Coastal Carolina pitcher Alex Cunningham was named a 2017 Second Team All-American by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, the publication announced Thursday.

Cunningham becomes Coastal’s 30th baseball All-American overall and the 23rd over the last 16 seasons.

In addition to being named All-American, the right-hander was twice named a National Player of the Week by Collegiate Baseball and named a National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association National Pitcher of the Week once this past season.

Cunningham was 7-2 with a 2.63 earned-run average this season. He led the Sun Belt Conference and currently ranks 13th in the NCAA with 117 strikeouts, which ranks fifth on the CCU single-season list.

He additionally ranks among the national leaders in WHIP (20th; 0.83) and fewest hits allowed per nine innings (38th; 6.37) and opponents batted just .195 against him.

In Sun Belt games, Cunningham posted a league-best 84 strikeouts and threw a league-best 75 innings.

In March, he threw back-to-back complete-game shutouts against Arkansas State and Georgia State, and he twice struck out 14 batters in a game to match the CCU single-game record.

Cunningham, a 2016 CCU graduate who is working on his Masters in Business Administration, was one of just two Sun Belt players among the 81 named to one of Collegiate Baseball’s three teams, with the other being conference Pitcher of the Year Gunner Leger of Louisiana-Lafayette on the third team.

This story was originally published June 1, 2017 at 4:47 PM with the headline "CCU pitcher named an All-American by Collegiate Baseball."