1. If Bracewell is on the roster, yes, he would count against the 35. Based on last year when we had a couple of guys like Micheal Dixon, and Jarrod Parks hurt pre-season, I'm going to go ahead and assume that yes, he will. That said, I don't understand why you couldn't "cut" a guy that is hurt in preseason and then allow him to try out and place him on the roster the next season. I'm sure it has to do with scholarship money, though- as in if you aren't on the team, you can't get any money. I do think that this is one of the many flaws that the NCAA has with their new roster rules because in my opinion, there should be some kind of a "reserve" list in case someone were to go down. If a team has a lot of injuries, they can get down into the 20's pretty quickly. And in baseball, stuff like Tommy John is especially common, so it makes even more sense to either expand the rosters to 40 or have a reserve list of some type.
2. Yes. I don't see any way around that, either. And that's going to be tough because I don't see anybody that is noticably more or less deserving of staying on the team that is a scholarship player. I don't envy Cohen on making that decision.
3. I know that Sam Frost, Jake Smithey, and Brayden Jones are on at least some type of academic aid. Jones might turn out to be a big steal for us- he is second on the team with two home runs. I'm not sure of all of the scholarship details on most of the players because it's variable from year to year, and I'm not sure that it's something that they really like to divulge too much. I do know that Caleb Reed had his scholarship pulled. Most of the others that had their scholarship pulled transferred.
4. I would say so. See my response in number two. As much as Cohen is preceived as being a hardass, I'm still sure it's hard to cut someone. People may have forgotten, but Cohen himself at one time was not so different than a lot of the guys on the team- he had to start out at Birmingham-Southern and then transfer to MSU and make the team himself. And I truly believe that all of the guys on the team right now really love MSU baseball and want to be a part of it. We have some guys walking on that could easily make another team even- another I-A team in some cases, but they're putting their baseball lives on the line to try to play for MSU. And I really hate what has happened to Ryan Duffy, and I would not wish that upon anyone, but I really think that incident might be something that will kind of polarize our team and help bridge any gaps between the coaches and some of the older players.
It's certianly going to go down to the last day that someone can be cut in February.