JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Opening the doors to the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex, Carson-Newman plays its first games with a brand new turf infield against West Liberty to start an eight-game stint at the friendly confines against West Liberty. The series opens with a single game on Saturday at 2 p.m. wrapping up at with a doubleheader on Sunday starting at noon.
It is the first time that the Eagles will play on the new turf infield that will allow the team to play through any weather conditions courtesy of the generosity of C-N player and current Chicago White Sox right-hander Steve Cishek.
"It's been absolutely amazing," Carson-Newman coach Tom Griffin said. "We aren't going to miss any time as far as being on the field itself. That is absolutely valuable for your players. Anything that you have to do baseball wise you can do. We have always been fortunate with the football facilities being next door to us and them being accommodating for us. It has always been a huge help for us."
The Eagles have never started a season 5-0 since the records go back to 1990. During that time, the best start in school history came during the 1999 campaign when the squad reached the Division II World Series. Coach Gary Rundles led his unit to an 11-1 start and 25-4-1 before they lost two in-a-row for the first time during the championship season.
"We have played some good games and have earned it," Griffin said. "I think we have had some games where we haven't played well but we did enough in that game to get out of some really sticky situations. We have made some mistakes not playing clean baseball putting ourselves in position to put up a crooked number but a guy has made a great pitch, a guy made a great defensive play, we have gotten key hits. The good thing that it has been someone different that has needed to come up with a big play."
Since Carson-Newman (4-0) joined Division II in 1994, the Eagles are 22-4 in home openers including 12-2 under Griffin since he took over in 2006. The Eagles have won seven straight home openers with their last loss in a lidlifter at home coming on Feb. 21, 2012 when King took home a 10-7 victory.
Griffin has led his group to an 89-44 record at home since the beginning of the 2015 campaign. In that span the group is posting just shy of eight runs per game scoring 1,031 over those 133 contests. On the mound however the team yielded 29 of its 44 homers inside of the Mossy Creek stadium.
While the Eagles have never played West Liberty on the diamond, the Eagles have played four teams – Concord, Davis & Elkins, West Virginia State and West Virginia Wesleyan – from the Mountain East going 8-1. The lone loss during that stretch came on May 25, 1999 at the Division II World Series when West Virginia State won 14-4 to end the Eagles' season.
C-N has won six straight against the Mountain East most recently defeating Davis & Elkins twice last season by a combined 27-9. The Eagles posted a .375 team batting average while the pitching staff fanned 22 and walked five over 16 frames.
This weekend is the open to the year for the Hilltoppers after finishing 2019 with a 10-37 overall record that included a 9-23 mark in the Mountain East, good for a three-way tie at the bottom of the table. In 2019, the team dropped its first 17 road games of the season before winning at Wheeling Jesuit 5-3 on May 4.
West Liberty has back-to-back losing seasons on file since a string of four straight winning campaigns for a program that dates back to 1962. There are two notable alumni from the school in pitchers Joe Niekro and Ray Searage.
Niekro, a three-time all-conference selection in the mid 1960s, played for seven Major League Baseball teams over 22 seasons making the all-star team in 1979 with the Houston Astros where he is in the team's Hall of Fame. He is the youngest brother of 1997 Hall of Famer Phil and won 221 big league games.
Searage pitched for the Hilltoppers in the mid-1970s and spent seven years in the show with four teams appearing in 254 games. He became a pitching coach soon after his career ended and spent the 2010 decade as the pitching coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Looking at the statistics from 2019, West Liberty's pitching staff yielded over 12 hits per nine innings, the 15th-most in the nation a year ago. They need to replace the team's starting pitcher, Parker Dyson. The left-hander had 81 strikeouts in 62 2/3 innings allowing a .224 batting average against.
At the plate, the team posted a .357 on-base percentage, 200th in the country, and hit a total of 16 homers. The Hilltoppers return their top three hitters led by Colton Coss and Bailey McGrath as each man hit .338.
All of the action will air on cneagles.com/live with audio and video streams available with the Eagle Sports Networks taking care of the sights and sounds.
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