HOUSTON – The HCU baseball team, coming off a series win on the road against the team at the top of the standings, welcomes New Orleans to Husky Field for a three-game series from Friday through Sunday in a rematch of last year's Southland Conference Championship Series won by the Huskies.
HCU (16-20, 8-10 SLC) righted the ship last weekend after dropping three straight weekend series, taking two-of-three in Natchitoches, La. from a Northwestern State team currently sitting atop the league standings. The Huskies out-scored the Demons, 17-9, in the series as the HCU pitching staff allowed just seven earned runs across three games.
This past Tuesday, the Huskies dropped a tough 4-3 road matchup against a Texas State team currently ranked No. 36 in the NCAA RPI rankings. Eight HCU pitchers combined to strike out nine Bobcat hitters in eight innings of work while limiting Texas State to five hits. Offensively,
Jeremy Rader hit his first home run of the season.
New Orleans (16-23, 6-12 SLC) earned a walk-off win over Troy at home on Tuesday, winning 11-10 in 10 innings. Last weekend was the Privateers' bye weekend in the SLC schedule so UNO headed north for a three-game set at Illinois, falling on Friday and Saturday before salvaging a win on Sunday before heading home.
The Privateers rank third in the SLC in home runs so far this season, belting 46 as a team with senior Kruise Newman leading the way with nine. Three other players have seven homers each. Newman also leads the team with 33 RBI while junior Eli Tidwell has scored a team-high 35 runs.
On the mound, junior left-hander Bryson Goff has a team-best three wins with a 3-3 record despite a 10.53 ERA in 33.1 innings pitched. As a staff, the Privateers are averaging just over six walks per nine innings for the highest total in the conference.
The Huskies and Privateers met five times last season with UNO earning a regular season sweep in the Crescent City. They then met as the No. 6 and No. 8 seeds in the SLC tournament after winning their respective SLC Bracket play weekends in a best-of-three series at Husky Field. HCU won the SLC title in two games to advance to the program's first NCAA postseason since 2015.
The three-game series is scheduled to being on Friday, Apr. 17, at 6:30 p.m. followed by 2:00 p.m. starts on both Saturday, Apr. 18, and Sunday, Apr. 19.
