JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Limestone has won seven straight home games against Carson-Newman as the Eagles look to bust that streak and win their first game of 2017 Wednesday afternoon for a 2 p.m. first pitch at Founders Federal Credit Union Stadium.
"We want to learn about some of the things that went wrong," Carson-Newman coach Tom Griffin said following an opening weekend sweep at North Georgia. "It's okay to learn from that. That's what life is about. When you make mistakes you want to learn from that. This weekend was a great test in sports and competition. When things don't go how you want them to how are we going to handle it?"
Wednesday marks the 27th meeting between the two programs and 18th time that Carson-Newman has travelled to Limestone dating back to the 1988 season when the squads met in Florida in a preseason showcase. Each club has earned 13 wins in the first 26 outings.
The series is slanted heavily towards each schools home field as C-N has won all seven games not played on Limestone's campus. However, in Gaffney, the Saints are 13-4 and have won seven straight meetings on their campus.
The last time the Eagles won a game at Limestone came on April 2, 2008 when C-N earned an 8-2 victory during the last season it qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Cory McGinnis drove in four runs and Derek Long went 3-for-4 with three runs scored. A trio of hurlers combined to allow six hits.
The most recent meeting in the Palmetto State was C-N's 2016 season opener that saw Limestone hold on to a 5-4 victory holding the Eagles without a hit for the first 4 1/3 innings of the day.
Jimmy Rice and Brendan Campbell combined for four of Carson-Newman's six hits leaving six runners on base. Garrett Lowery hit a home run and scored the game-winner on a throwing error by Trever Lee in the eighth.
Limestone finished the 2016 season with a 19-31 overall record and an 8-19 mark in Conference Carolinas to finish eighth in the league standings.
The Saints started the season with a 6-5 loss at South Atlantic Conference team Mars Hill before sweeping Saint Anselm in a three-game series over the weekend.
Guilford Tech transfer Matt Orth has a pair of three-hit outs to start the season and is hitting .533 overall with four doubles and four RBIs helping the team to average eight runs per game.
In 2016, the team's pitching staff ranked 234th in the country in walks allowed per nine innings at 5.5 aiding in the team's earned run average of 6.72 that ranked 202nd. The hurlers struck out just six batters per nine frames.
At the plate, the Saints scored 5.6 runs per game, 164th nationally while not ranking in the top half of the league in any offensive category except for triples.
Lowery became the first Limestone field player to be named to the first-team National Collegiate Baseball Writers of America Division II Preseason All-Southeast Region Team. The outfielder ranked second in the nation with 10 triples in 2016 while leading his team in six categories and was a second-team All-Conference Carolinas honoree. He is hitting .545 with a home run and five RBIs in his first 11 at-bats of the season.
Eric Cain will pick up the microphone for the Eagle Sports Network's broadcast coverage on cneagles.com/live. The game hits the airwaves at 1:50 p.m. with "The Appalachian Electric Cooperative Countdown to First Pitch".
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