Four Missouri Valley Conference baseball student-athletes have been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Team. Brad Canada of Bradley made first-team honors at catcher while Joe Muich and Phil Napolitan of Wichita State and Zach Daeges of Creighton made the third team.

After becoming the baseball program’s first-ever Academic All-American by gaining second team honors in 2004, Canada became the third student-athlete in school history to earn first-team notice from CoSIDA and the second to become a repeat honoree.

Canada graduated earlier this month with a bachelor’s degree in finance after a fifth consecutive semester with a 4.0 grade point average boosted his final GPA to 3.90. He finished the 2005 season second on the team with a .339 batting average, giving him a final .315 career average. He also set the single-season school record by being hit by 19 pitches in 2005, which also gave him a school-record 33 career hit by pitches. Defensively, Canada wound up third in school history with 1,204 career putouts.

Napolitan, an outfielder from Page, Ariz., has a 3.81 GPA in exercise science. Muich, a catcher from Fenton, Mo., has a 3.60 GPA in sport administration.

Daeges, a junior from Harlon, Iowa, becomes the first Bluejya baseball player to receive academic all-american status since Dan Lawler earned it for three years (1999-01). He leads the CU team in batting average (.359), RBI (58), slugging percentage (.611), on-base percentage (.473) and walks (38).