JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – With four wins in four games, Carson-Newman looks to build on its season-starting winning streak on Tuesday when 16th-ranked Lee comes to the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex for a 2 p.m. first pitch.
One key area of note for the club through for games is the success at the plate and on the mound with runners in scoring position. The team is hitting .333 this year with seven players producing multiple hits with runners in scoring position. Conversely, the pitching staff has held foes to a .170 margin, 8-for-47. It has needed it with the pitching staff allowing .559 of opposing lead-off hitters to reach base.
Under coach Tom Griffin, the Eagles are 30-54 under nationally-ranked teams with an 18-28 tally in games played at Mossy Creek. In 2021, the team registered four wins against top 25 teams, its most since 2018 recording two victories over top 10 clubs, the most since 2013 by the program.
Carson-Newman (4-0) has played teams ranked in 21 of the 25 slots under Griffin with this being the first matchup with a 16th-ranked team. The other rankings without a clash are four, eight and 20. Since 1990, the program has played a No. 16 team once in a three-game series against Tusculum on March 25-26, 2005 winning the finale 6-2 with Matt Teague firing eight innings of four-hit, two-run baseball before freshman Steve Cishek fanned a pair in a scoreless ninth.
Tuesday's contest is the 24th between C-N and Lee (1-2) as the Eagles hold a 12-11 edge and an 8-5 advantage in affairs played in Jefferson City. It is the fifth time that the Flames have been nationally ranked. The Eagles won twice in 2013 when Lee was No. 13 but have lost the last two, a 6-5 setback at No. 7 on April 6, 2005 and a 4-1 loss at No. 6 on March 23, 2021.
The teams split a pair of meetings in 2021 with Griffin's group winning 12-6 at home Feb. 19. The Orange and Blue posted a .324 team batting average with five stolen bases in the two meetings as Matt Parkinson (Whitesboro, N.Y.) hit two homers in the victory.
In 2021, the Flames spent much of the year ranked in the top 10 of the country finishing the year with a 36-11 winning the regular-season championship by percentage points over West Florida. In the South Regional, the team beat Alabama Huntsville twice before losing 7-0 to West Florida in the game prior to the regional title contest against regional winner Tampa.
Coach Mark Brew needs to replace a pair of All-Americans in Ryan Beamish and Logan Workman. Beamish hit .344 with 20 homers and 67 RBIs. Workman was a seventh-round pick of the Tampa Bay Rays after a dominating 8-1 season with a 1.81 ERA fanning 110. He fired eight innings of one-run baseball striking out nine to start the team's NCAA Tournament run.
The Gulf South Conference selected Lee to finish third in the league in the preseason poll behind West Florida and Delta State. The team's pitching staff was one of the best in the nation after leading the GSC in strikeouts (460), shutouts (6), saves (16), and opponent batting average (.234). With less than eight hits allowed per nine innings, the team was ninth nationally.
Lee started the year with a three-game series at North Georgia winning the opener 5-4 before losing 14-0 and 10-4 in Dahlonega. The team mustered 22 hits in the series, 10 of which came in game one while striking out 20 times. The majority of the damage by the Nighthawks came off of the starters with 13 runs coming against two hurlers that recorded five outs.
There was only one extra-base hit for the team on the weekend, a double by Dylan Standifer who went 4-for-10 at the plate with a pair of RBIs. Justen Freeman, a graduate student, drove in a team-high three runs on three knocks.
Tuesday's game can be seen and heard with video and audio streams available thanks to the Eagle Sports Network by visiting cneagles.com/live for all of the action from the banks of Mossy Creek.
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