JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Returning to the friendly confines for a four-game week, Carson-Newman hosts Young Harris, a 2022 NCAA Tournament team, on Tuesday at 2 p.m. inside of the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex.
Carson-Newman's pitching has settled in to a consistent role having allowed five or fewer runs seven times in the first 15 games of the season. Since Valentine's Day, the staff has a 4.50 ERA (32 earned runs in 64 innings) having allowed no more than seven runs and yielding a pair of home runs.
At the plate the Eagles are putting the ball in play with a high frequency drawing 11 walks in the last six games and only striking out 18 times over that period. The team has been boom or bust on the base paths with six games of multiple steals and six affairs with zero.
Tuesday is the seventh time that Carson-Newman (6-9) will face off with Young Harris (10-5) aiming for its first win. In the first six meetings, the Eagles have lost by a pair of runs twice with the Mountain Lions scoring double-digit runs three times and at least seven in each of the first six games.
Last season, the Orange and Blue lost the first meeting 19-7 in their fourth game in three days at the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex before falling 7-5 on April 16. Matt Parkinson launched a pair of homers putting the visitors ahead 4-3 in the fifth inning. The Eagles tied the margin at five in the ninth but Noah Fitzgerald launched a 2-1 pitch over the wall for a walk-off roundtripper.
In 2022, the Mountain Lions won a program-record 39 games and beat eighth-ranked Columbus State in the Peach Belt Conference Championship for their second tournament title in the last three years. The team lost to Wingate twice in the Southeast Regional being bounced from the postseason.
Entering the campaign, Young Harris was a top 30 team in the preseason coaches' poll joining Columbus State, fourth, as the only two teams in the conference to be ranked. The team was projected to finish second in the league with the Cougars named the unanimous favorites.
Three players were named to the preseason all-conference team led by Ethan Underwood who finished second in the Peach Belt with 81 hits and top 10 in batting average, runs scored, doubles and stolen bases. Mark Castle hit .538 during the league finals weekend and Rome Wallace was a second-team all-league pick after cranking 13 homers and 57 RBIs.
Coach Stephen Waggener's team opened the year with four straight wins outscoring teams 50-15 sweeping Union and Mars Hill. Overall it was a 9-2 open to the year but the club has dropped three of the last four dropping two out of three at North Georgia. After winning game one 3-1, the club was blanked 2-0 and 11-0. The Mountain Lions have not scored a run in the last 22 innings since an Underwood two-run homer in the third inning on Feb. 24.
Young Harris is hitting .262 as a team being held to 24 hits in the last five games but has five outings with at least 10 pokes for the year. The group has 15 homers with a long ball in each of the first seven games of the year but only has two in the last eight.
Only two regulars are hitting above .300 as Jarrett Ford and Drew Bray have combined for 32 hits and 26 runs. The team has stolen at least two bases in eight games with five players stealing at least three bases going 29-for-36 overall as a team.
On the rubber, the pitching staff is holding foes to a .250 batting average against with 49 walks in 124 1/3 innings. The team has allowed two or fewer runs six times and only two teams have scored more than seven runs. Tusculum racked up 13 on Feb. 21 and the Nighthawks had 11 in the finale on Sunday.
Tuesday's game will air on FloSports with an subscription required to watch the video with an audio-only stream available on cneagles.com/live.
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