JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – In its final non-conference weekend series of 2017 Carson-Newman welcomes Saginaw Valley State to the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex for a four-game series starting Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. The series continues with a doubleheader starting at noon on Saturday before wrapping up on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Griffin's group enters Tuesday's game with a four-game losing streak, its longest since beginning the 2016 season 0-4. The Eagles have not lost five straight since dropping six in-a-row from March 7-15, 2015.
"We have learned a lot about ourselves fundamentally and probably more mentally," Carson-Newman coach Tom Griffin said. "We realize that we probably have not played our best baseball in all facets. That's good because the best is yet to come. There are some things mentally. We were disappointed that we didn't play our best baseball. The errors, the wild pitches and lack of being our best was disappointing. We talked on Monday and our guys are playing a little tight. The expectations are high and they just aren't handling it."
Carson-Newman (6-9) and Saginaw Valley State (0-4) have never met on the diamond. The last time the two schools participated in any sport was football on Sept. 2, 1999 when the Eagles won 41-7 at Burke-Tarr Stadium. C-N also beat SVSU in the NAIA National Semifinals in 1983 and 1984 en route to NAIA National Championships on the gridiron.
Overall, C-N is 12-4 against teams from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference having played Ashland, Grand Valley State, Northwood and Tiffin.
The Cardinals went 22-28 overall during the 2016 season while compiling a 14-18 mark in the GLIAC to tie for eighth place in a 12-team league that produced a trio of NCAA Tournament clubs. In the preseason coaches' poll, SVSU was picked sixth just three points behind C-N's foe two weeks ago, Northwood.
Saginaw Valley State opened its season last weekend dropping each game of a four-game series to a Maryville (Mo.) team that finished 21-27 a year ago. The Cards play each of their first 26 games on the road as the first home outing comes on April 8 in a doubleheader against Tiffin.
In the first series, SVSU gave up 16 runs on two occasions and roughly 12 per game on average striking out just 21 batters in 28 innings and walking 22 with 47 hits allowed while posting just 23 runs as a unit. Defensively, the team committed nine errors against the Saints.
The top returning arm is two-time all-conference hurler Scott Sency, a senior left-hander, coming off of a 5-4 junior campaign where he tallied a 4.97 ERA striking out 70 in 63 1/3 innings. Sency started the 2017 opener for the Cardinals working five innings of three-run baseball punching out five.
In the field, the team is led by 2016 GLIAC Freshman of the Year and first-team All-GLIAC pick Jordan Swiss. The infielder led the Cardinals in batting average (.351), hits (59) and in doubles (12).
Sophomore center fielder Adam Fitzgibbon was named an honorable mention all-league selection as he hit .314 while leading the group with a team-high eight stolen bases.
Senior Chad Carson is off to the best start in 2017 having piled up at least a knock in each of the first four games going 7-for-15 to begin the year with four doubles and five RBIs.
The Eagle Sports Network's wall-to-wall coverage starts 15 minutes prior to the first pitch "The Appalachian Electric Cooperative Countdown to First Pitch" on cneagles.com/live with video and audio streams available for free.
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