JAMAICA, N.Y. -- St. John’s University junior shortstop Mike Rozema (Fair Lawn, N.J.) was named to the first-team All-BIG EAST team, it was announced tonight at a banquet prior to the start of the conference tournament.

Rozema had one of the most outstanding offensive seasons by a player in St. John’s history.

He finished the season batting .408, which led the team, ranked third in the BIG EAST and was among the top-20 in the nation. Rozema’s .408 average was tied for the fifth-best single season mark in school history and he is one of only eight players at the school to bat .400 or higher.

Rozema, who is the first junior captain under eighth year head coach Ed Blankmeyer, led the Red Storm in nearly every offensive category, including batting average, at-bats (196), hits (80), runs scored (44), runs batted in (33) and on-base percentage (.460). His is only the second player in program history to reach 80 hits in one season.

In BIG EAST games, he ranked second in the league with a .439 batting average, and was also among the top-10 in hits (2nd, 43), stolen bases (5th, 9), doubles (3rd, 9), total bases (2nd, 59), on-base percentage (4th, .491) and slugging percentage (5th, .602).

Rozema was named the BIG EAST Player of the Week on April 14 after leading the Red Storm to a three-game sweep at Georgetown, batting .615 (8-for-13) with four runs scored, five RBI and a grand slam home run – the first of his career – during the weekend.

He also had a career-high 22-game hit streak, batting .542 in that span (45-for-83), with 21 runs scored, 19 RBI, six doubles, three triples and one home run.

Rozema had a team-high 24 multi-hit games, including 15 with two hits, six with three and three four-hit games. He reached base safely in 26-straight games at one point, and in 48 of 54 games overall. He had a career-high .969 fielding percentage, which was the second-best mark of any BIG EAST shortstop this season.

He is the first Red Storm shortstop to earn all-BIG EAST honors since 1998, when Giancarlo DiPrima was named first-team, and the since Rich Aurilia, currently the starting shortstop for the San Francisco Giants.

Two other Red Storm juniors – pitcher Joe Reid (Rutherford, N.J.) and outfielder Anthony DeRosa (Salem, N.H.) – earned third team honors.

Reid finished the season with a 3-3 record and a 3.74 earned run average. After missing the 2002 season while recovering from surgery, Reid was the team’s top pitcher. Despite going 1-2 in the last month of the season, he was dominant, allowing only five earned runs on 19 hits in 24 innings for a 1.88 earned run average.

DeRosa, meanwhile, finished fifth on the team in batting with a .312 average. He was second on the team in runs scored (42), third in hits (55), second in doubles (13), second in home runs (6) and drove in a team-high 34 runs.

St. John’s finished the season with a 29-27 overall record, and a 12-14 mark in the BIG EAST, seventh place overall.