Carson-Newman Baseball Game Notes

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Having lost five of their last seven games, the Carson-Newman Eagles (11-8) travel to Nashville to take on the Trevecca Nazerene Trojans (10-2) Wednesday afternoon at 5 p.m. at Jackson Field for the first ever meeting between the two programs.

"We're not losing faith," head coach Tom Griffin said. "We know what's important and that's our relationship with Jesus Christ. We're not going to forget that. We have to stay strong with each other."

The Eagles lost two out of three contests against Lincoln Memorial over the weekend allowing ten runs in each of the two losses. In the last seven games, Carson-Newman has seen its team earned run average jump from 2.65 to 4.04. A big part of the issue has been the fact that opponents have reached base safely to start an inning in half of their plate appearances in that span.

Offensively, the Eagles have started to find some pop in their bats as they clubbed five round trippers on Saturday against the Railsplitters. Junior right fielder Cody Fox (Seymour, Tenn.) hit a long ball in each of the three games going 5-for-12 with six RBI. Junior left fielder Bo Ausmus (Jefferson City, Tenn.) continued his hot streak at the plate going 6-for-9 with two blasts and three RBI. Ausmus now leads the team with a .371 average after beginning the season 1-for-12 at the dish.

As a team, Carson-Newman is ninth nationally with 13 home runs this season with Ausmus and Fox ranking 13^th among all players at the Division II level.

The Trojans enter Wednesday having won nine straight games outscoring opponents by an average score of 7.7 to 1.4 in that time period including three shutouts. In a sweep of Olivet Nazerene over the weekend, Trevecca Nazerene struck out 25 batters while walking just six batters.

Each of the last two weeks, Trevecca Nazerene has had the Great Midwest Athletic Conference offensive player of the week. After Hunter Newman won last week, Ethan Hurt was named this week collecting six hits with one home run and two doubles and three stolen bases. Hurt leads the team with a .471 batting average and is 9-for-9 in stolen base attempts.

As a club, the Trojans have a 2.70 ERA with 89 strikeouts and 30 walks in 100 innings. The pitching staff has allowed 77 total hits. Only two of ten hurlers have allowed more hits than innings pitched this season.

You can listen to the broadcast Wednesday afternoon on the Eagles Sports Network by going to cneagles.com/live with pregame coverage beginning at 4:50 p.m.

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