JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – With a four-game winning streak in hand, Carson-Newman welcomes Limestone to the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. and travels to Rome, Ga. to face Shorter at 3 p.m. on Wednesday looking to ride the momentum from last week.
"We want to come out in practice and have an intent," Carson-Newman coach Tom Griffin said. "What we don't want to do when we get into the training is to have a lull and have to pick it back up for the game. We want to train the way we are going to play. We want to play the way we train. They have to come out with energy and we want that to be an everyday thing and not just game day."
Carson-Newman (14-16) and Limestone (18-13) are meeting for the 28th time since 1988 as the Eagles hold a narrow 14-13 edge busting the tie with an 11-5 win in Gaffney on Feb. 8, C-N's lone road win of the year. Greg Jones (Maryville, Tenn.) hit a long ball and drove in five runs as the Eagles picked up their first win of the year after scoring five runs in the first inning.
The two programs first played at Mossy Creek on April 19, 2006 and C-N has won each of the seven meetings at the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex outscoring Limestone 68-24 through the seven affairs.
The Eagles are looking to beat Limestone twice in one season for just the second time in the nine times the two clubs have squared off multiple times in one year. The only time the program pulled of the season sweep came in 2006 as it won 8-6 at Limestone and 9-3 at home.
In the March 29, 2016 battle in Jefferson City, Carson-Newman picked up the most lopsided win in the series with an 18-1 triumph. Gooch Greer (Dickson, Tenn.) went 3-for-4 with two home runs and six RBIs and 12 different Eagles scored at least one run. Limestone pitching issued 13 walks on the day marking the most taken by Carson-Newman since the South Atlantic Conference Tournament against Lincoln Memorial on April 23, 2010 in a 7-5 Eagle victory.
The Saints enter the contest having won five of their last seven games but are just 2-7 in road games on the year. After starting 0-6 on the road, the club took two out of three over Southern Wesleyan over the weekend. The team's batting average is almost 100 points lower on the road it is hitting .240 on the road while scoring less than five runs per game and are averaging just two extra-base hits per game compared to five in home outings.
Limestone has produced some pop ranking second in the nation with 61 home runs, 46 at home, as a team in 2017. Garrett Lowery has 15 blasts, second in the nation, while Zach Piazza and Chase Allen have cranked 13 long balls to place No. 5 amongst Division II players. The team relies heavily on the roundtripper as the club has just 21 stolen bases, fewest in Conference Carolinas on the year.
Defensively the team ranks 218th in the country in fielding percentage having made 54 errors as a team to tally a .950 clip in the field. The catchers have thrown out just 24 percent of base runners attempting a stolen base.
On the rubber, the hurlers are yielding 11 hits per nine innings and walking nearly five batters per game. The Saints are ranked last in their league in strikeouts per nine innings at just shy of seven.
Lowery is putting together one of the better seasons in the region as he ranks second nationally in total bases with 108, third with 42 runs scored, 10th with 54 hits. The outfielder is second in the league with a .450 batting average and RBIs with 42 while slugging .900, 11th in the country.
Carson-Newman and Shorter (16-13) are meeting for just the fifth time as the series opened up in 2014. The Eagles have won all three affairs on the road while dropping a 9-8 contest on April 8, 2016 at the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex.
The Eagles held an 8-1 advantage entering the seventh inning in that contest before the Hawks scored three in the seventh, one in the eighth and fourth in the ninth to pull off the comeback win. A three-run home run by Ty Cherry with two outs in the ninth was the final blow in the win. Shorter stranded 13 runners on base but outhit Carson-Newman 12-9 on the day as Tyler Cates tossed three scoreless innings of relief to improve to 1-2 on the season.
The last time the two programs tangled in Rome, Ga. was Feb. 10, 2016 as C-N picked up a 6-3 win to earn its first victory of the 2016 season. Ryan Eberle (Cookeville, Tenn.) tossed the first complete game of his career Eberle allowing three earned runs on seven hits and two walks with six strikeouts and two pick offs on the day. Paul Kirby (Goodlettsville, Tenn.) finished the day 3-for-5 with two runs scored while Jimmy Rice (Middlesex, N.J.) joined the junior with multiple hits going 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored.
The Eagles are looking to snap an eight-game road losing streak that dates back to an 11-5 victory at Limestone on Feb. 8. The skid matches the longest streak in true road games since 1990 with the 1994 team that dropped eight in-a-row from April 1 through May 4.
Shorter started the season 6-0 and since opening the 2017 campaign 13-5, the team has lost eight of its last 11 outings including a sweep at the hands of Alabama Huntsville over the weekend.
The game against Limestone will have a video and audio stream available while the Shorter game will be an audio only broadcast on cneagles.com/live. Coverage of both affairs starts at 2:45 p.m. with "The Appalachian Electric Cooperative Countdown to First Pitch" on the Eagle Sports Network.
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