VIDEO: Vickee Kazee-Hollifield Interview
Carson-Newman has dominated the all-time series with Catawba 47-14 thanks to 27 straight wins from 1994-2006; however, the Indians have won four consecutive against C-N largely because of one player.
Indians' pitcher Carly Tysinger is second in the conference with 100 strikeouts. She has 46 career strikeouts against the Eagles through five outings. Tysinger is 11th in the country with 10.6 strikeouts per seven innings.
"There's no hidden agenda with her, she's a rise ball pitcher," head coach Vickee Kazee-Hollifield said. "She's a bulldog out there. She's resilient and will give you everything you can handle. We've got to be smart hitters in the box against her."
In a SAC tournament game last year, Tysinger threw 275 pitches in 15 innings of work to help the Indians to a win over Lenoir-Rhyne. Along the way, Tysinger set the NCAA Division II single game record for strikeouts with 27 Bears fanned.
Carson-Newman doesn't have a slouch in the circle though. Danielle Kranz (Fairfield, Calif.) is second in the SAC to Kranz in strikeouts per game. Kranz has 9.14 a contest to Tysinger's 10.55 tally.
The Eagles bats will effort to counteract Tysinger's work in the circle.
Carson-Newman features the two best bats in the South Atlantic Conference. Bre Lockett (Fontana, Calif.) leads the league with a .536 mark in SAC play while Sarah Howard (Georgetown, Ky.) is second in the conference with a .453 average. Lockett has hit successfully in four straight games. She has collected hits in 16 of the last 17 games for the Eagles.
"Bre is a strong hitter," Kazee-Hollifield said. "She doesn't go after bad pitches. She's very patient and makes pitchers come to her. I'd like for the rest of the team to learn some things from her in her approach at the plate."
Carson-Newman is coming off a doubleheader sweep of Brevard. The Eagles rallied from a four-run deficit to take game one 12-4 before shutting out the Tornados in game two 3-0. C-N is searching for its first back-to-back SAC series sweeps since the 2012 season when the Eagles won two against both Anderson and Mars Hill in back-to-back South Atlantic Conference doubleheaders.
"We're leaving too many base runners on in key situations," Kazee-Hollifield said. "We could have big innings to counteract what other teams have done because we're missing opportunities with runners in scoring position and less than two out. Our pitching needs to help us out too by shutting people down in the same situations."
First pitch from the Vick Saturday is slated for 1 p.m. Coverage will be available on the Eagle Sports Network with a free high definition stream at cneagles.com/live.
