The Binghamton University baseball team finished its non-conference schedule with a disappointing 11-game road trip over spring break, but the results aren’t what have left uncertainty in the mind of head coach Tim Sinicki as the team enters its America East opener at Stony Brook on Friday.

“I don’t know what to expect, we just have so few guys who have played a lot of innings in America East games,” he said. “I’m not sure how the new guys are going to react, or even how the returning guys are going to react because they’re playing in different circumstances and new roles.”

The Bearcats (7-15), whose four-game series with Stony Brook begins Friday at 3:30 p.m., dropped five games — three at Kansas State, two at Wichita State — from March 21 to 26 before splitting doubleheaders at Fairleigh Dickinson last weekend. But even with the losses, some of the newest Bearcats have been the most productive.

Right fielder Pete Bregartner and third baseman Brian Ivan, both freshmen, have captured the last two America East Rookie of the Week awards respectively. Ivan, who received the award for the week ending March 23, leads BU with a .370 average. Bregartner, who is tied for third on the team with a .303 average and would have needed just one more hit to have the second-best average, received the award for the week ending March 30.

The two combined to drive in five of Binghamton’s total runs against FDU. Binghamton took the first games of doubleheaders Saturday and Sunday, 6-3 and 4-3. They dropped the second games 3-2 and 4-3, respectively.

“I think obviously the stats speak for themselves,” said senior southpaw Gio Yannuzzi. “Ivan and Bregatner are swinging it really well, they’re two of the hottest offensive players we’ve got going.”

Yannuzzi (0-2) allowed just one earned run on six hits over six innings in the final game against Fairleigh Dickinson, but the Bearcats, as has been the case most of the spring, had trouble pulling out the close decision, falling 4-3. Nine of Binghamton’s losses have come by two runs or less.

“It’s a play here, it’s a pitch there, it’s a bad at-bat somewhere else,” Sinicki said. “We’re still feeling our way a little bit through some growing pains, I think that stuff will eventually come. There’s some patience that needs to be involved.”

Pitching has perennially been Binghamton’s strength, and 2008 hasn’t started off differently. Yannuzzi, who is scheduled to start the third game of the four-game series with the Seawolves, has a 2.70 ERA in 20 innings this season, the best mark amongst BU starters.

“Biggest thing for me this year, I came in in good shape, a lot better shape than I had been in the last two years … Being a senior I wanted to be a guy to step up and make it hard for coach not to put me in the rotation.”

Stony Brook (10-11), which was picked to win the conference in the AE preseason coaches poll, has the best non-conference record of the seven AE teams, and the pitching to at least match that of Binghamton.

Senior right-handers Tom Koehler and Gary Novakowski, last season’s America East Pitcher of the Year, top the rotation. Koehler, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall and 235 pounds, is 4-1 with a 2.88 ERA and 38 strikeouts in 34 1/3 innings.

“They deserved to be the No. 1 team,” Sinicki said. “It’s a heck of a way for us to start out conference play with a challenge like that.”

But even if Binghamton, last season’s regular season champion and tournament runner-up, falters this weekend, Sinicki believes 2007 serves as a perfect example of the fact that how a team starts isn’t necessarily indicative of how it will finish.

“The team that went to regionals last year from the conference lost four straight in its opening week to us — Albany,” he said. “They figured some things out, rallied the troops and next thing you knew they were playing in the conference championship against us.”

Notes: Sophomore infielder Jeff Abrams has returned to action after missing time early due to a hamstring injury, but is still not 100 percent … Former Bearcats starting pitcher Scott Diamond, 21, is scheduled to make his professional debut at 7 p.m. Friday night for the Rome Braves, a Single-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, in a South Atlantic League game in Rome, Ga. He’s facing the Charleston RiverDogs, a New York Yankees affiliate. Diamond signed with the Braves last summer after three seasons with BU.