Eagles Face Wofford in Final SoCon Series
5/17/2012 8:32:58 AM | Baseball
STATESBORO, Ga. - After a win in their final mid-week game, the Georgia Southern Baseball team will look to extend a three-game win streak in their final Southern Conference series of the year. The Eagles will close the regular season at Wofford with a shortened three-game series. The series opens at 6 p.m. on Friday and concludes with a doubleheader on Saturday.
Georgia Southern (29-24, 14-13), who currently sits in fifth place in the conference, needs a series victory to keep themselves in that position. Going into the final weekend, the Eagles can finish as high as fifth place and as low as seventh place but are just one game ahead of seventh-place Citadel.
GSU will send the same rotation of Chris Beck(Jefferson, Ga.), Justin Hess (Panama City, Fla.) and Will Middour (Atlanta, Ga.), which has posted an 11-7 SoCon record since the College of Charleston series, to the mound to help lock down the fifth seed.
Beck, who leads the conference with 100 strikeouts, will square off with Brandon Yarusi, who ranks second in the league with 97 punch outs, on Friday night. With three strikeouts last weekend, Beck became the first Eagle since Everett Teaford to strike out 100 batters in back-to-back seasons.
Wofford (20-31, 7-20) dropped their third-straight series to UNC Greensboro over the weekend, but their last SoCon series victory came over Elon. Mac Doyle leads a Terrier offense that is hitting .256 as a squad with a .351 average, 12 home runs and 45 RBIs. The pitching staff owns a 4.89 ERA and is led by Yarusi's 5-6 record and 2.95 ERA.
Georgia Southern picked up a win earlier this week and have won three-straight games behind the hot hitting of T.D. Davis (Evans, Ga.) and Garren Palmer (Dalton, Ga.). Davis is hitting .538 during those three games and has seven hits in 13 at-bats, while Palmer has walked four times, with two singles and two extra-base hits.
The Eagles have a couple of records on the line for Head Coach Rodney Hennon and Eric Phillips (Carrollton, Ga.). With one more victory this season, Hennon will tally his 15th straight season of 30 or more wins, which would rank him 8th among active head coaches. Phillips tied the school's all-time hits record with a solo shot in the 7-3 win over Kennesaw State on Tuesday. He now stands one hit away from setting a new school record and passing Scott Henley's record of 326 hits set back in 2001.
All baseball games this season can be heard on the Boomer 103.7 FM and inside J.I. Clements 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.
