Baseball Welcomes in Radford for Weekend Series
2/24/2012 7:45:00 PM | Baseball
STATESBORO, Ga. - After a record-setting crowd on Wednesday, the Georgia Southern Baseball team is looking to take advantage of their home turf in a three-game series against the Radford Highlanders. The weekend series opens up on Friday at 6 p.m. and continues with a 2:30 p.m. game on Saturday and a 1:30 p.m. contest on Sunday.
Georgia Southern (3-1), who dropped a mid-week game to #10 Georgia Tech 11-9, will send their same rotation to the mound from last weekend's sweep of UT Martin. The trio of Chris Beck (Jefferson, Ga.), Josh Adams (Bath, S.C.) and Kyle Rowe (Valdosta, Ga.) combined for a 1.80 ERA and allowed just three runs over 15 innings.
Led by Michael Burruss' (Marietta, Ga.) .529 batting average, the Eagles are hitting .311 as a team and upped their on-base percentage to .432 after 10 walks against the Yellow Jackets. Burruss is slugging 1.059 behind 18 total bases on three doubles and two homers. Stryker Brown (Dalton, Ga.) leads the team with six walks after walking three times on Wednesday.
After a series loss to Samford in the opening weekend and a mid-week loss to Liberty, Radford comes to Statesboro with a 1-3 record. The Highlanders will send highly-touted prospect Eddie Butler to the mound on Friday night and will round out the series with Tyler Costello and former UNCG transfer Mark Peterson. Butler, who allowed two runs on six hits over six innings in his first start, was ranked 35th by Perfect Game in their list of top-100 Cape Cod League prospects.
Jeff Kemp led the Radford batters with a .444 average but the team is hitting just .248 in the early going. The captain hit just .235 last year after battling through injuries and adjusting to the new bats but has almost reached his season total for doubles in four games this year. Kemp, who hit over .330 in his two previous seasons, has five doubles, a triple and a .833 slugging percentage in four starts at shortstop.
Radford won a school record 31 games last season and finished in a tie for fifth place in the Big South. The Highlanders won their conference tournament opener against host school VMI but dropped back-to-back games to Coastal Carolina and Gardner-Webb to conclude their season a year ago.
The two teams will meet each other for the first time in program history. The Eagles annually play Big South foe Charleston Southern in mid-week contests and are 9-1 in their last 10 games against teams from the conference.
The games can be heard on Boomer 103.7 FM and inside the stadium on 88.1 FM. Audio for all games is also available on the web and subscription video is available for all home games at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com/Eaglevision.
Fans can follow their Eagles at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com or receive short updates at facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics or on Google+ at gplus.to/GSAthletics.
