Baseball looks to maintain hot streak against Wofford
Andrew High / Sports Editor
The Phoenix baseball team used nine-and-seven run innings to
put away the Western Carolina Catamounts in its two victories
this weekend. The victories come as the team enters its final
two series against Southern Conference opponents.
The team (22-24, 12-11 SoCon) will match-up against Wofford
this weekend. Wofford ranks 10th in the conference with an
8-16 Southern Conference record. Phoenix coach Mike Kennedy
said his team will need to continue to win two out of three
games.
“Being on the road, it’s always tough,”
Kennedy said. “That’s the next challenge for this
club, to see if we can’t beat a team two out of three
on the road. We did it at UNC-Greensboro, which is
historically probably a better program than Wofford, but you
can’t take anything away from Wofford. They beat
Georgia Southern two out of three and we lost all three to
Georgia Southern. Hopefully we’ll play well and get
some momentum headed back to .500.”
Kennedy said the team will need to pick up a few wins against
Wofford to gain confidence for its series against league
leader College of Charleston, which begins May 21. College of
Charleston sits at 19-2 in Southern Conference play, its only
losses coming to The Citadel and Davidson University. The
Cougars have an eight game winning streak.
“Obviously, looking at the standings they’re the
best team in the league by far,” Kennedy said.
“Our first goal is to get out and play Wofford and play
well there. We want to try to keep ourselves in position to
have a good seed in the tournament. You drop down to that
seven and eight spot and end up playing one of the best teams
in the league. It can be tough on you. Going down to College
of Charleston will be a good challenge for us right before
the tournament. If we go down there and we play well down
there we’ll have some confidence and think ‘maybe
we can win this thing.’”
Kennedy said while he wishes the team could finish first in
the regular season standings, a finish in the middle of the
league is more likely.
“We could finish anywhere from six to three,” he
said. “Citadel lost three this weekend to East
Tennessee State. They got swept. Everyone’s going to
beat up on each other. Citadel has UNC-G and Georgia Southern
and College Charleston has us and Georgia Southern and UNC-G.
The top four teams are going to beat up on each other in the
next few weekends. It’s going to be interesting to see
what happens because there could be some shuffles in that top
of the order.”
Kennedy said the team has finally put all the aspects of its
game together as the season draws to a close.
“We’re playing our best baseball right
now,” Kennedy said. “That’s when you want
to do it. I told people that this club is going to get
better. We need to stay away from some mental lapses that
have caused us to look bad at times, but when we’re
sharp and playing well, we’re going to be a tough team
to beat and we’re going to make some noise in that
tournament.”
The team has played well after downing UNC-G 10-7 on April
17, winning seven of its last 10 games, but even Kennedy
admitted that his team’s offensive outburst in its
games against Western Carolina shocked him.
“Anytime you score nine and seven, that’s a
little bit of a surprise,” Kennedy said.
“We’re a good offensive club. We’re hitting
over .300 for the year. In yesterday’s game we had nine
straight hits and that’s almost unheard of, but
it’s exciting to be a part of.”
Brian Hensen (5-1) picked up the win for Elon and, on the
offensive side, every Elon starter got a hit in the
team’s final game of the series, a 9-4 win. Gary
Morris, Grant Rembert, Chris Price and Tyler Stevens all
recorded two hits in the game. Evan Erickson led the team in
hits going 4-5 with 4 RBI.
“If you look back in our stats, we’ve gone from a
club that’s hitting about .288 or .290 to right at
.302,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got a few guys
slipping but we’ve got more guys increasing their
batting average than going down. That’s a sign that
your guys are starting to see the ball better.”
Hensen leads the team in ERA at 4.24, but that might not have
been his most impressive stat from the weekend series. In
eight innings he scattered five hits, and gave up four runs,
but didn’t walk a single player.
“With aluminum bats, ERAs are going to be high for the
most part,” Kennedy said. “Ours haven’t
been like this since I’ve been here. We’ve been
able to swing the bat and score a lot of runs when he’s
been out there. Around 4.2, I can live with that.”
The Phoenix begins its series against Wofford May 7 in
Spartanburg, S.C.
Phoenix Notes:
Kyle Radford of Asheville, N.C. has signed to attend Elon
next season. Radford, who plays in the outfield, is the
brother of current Elon pitcher Kory Radford.
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