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College  | Story  | 5/10/2018

Weekend Preview: Week 13

Patrick Ebert     
Photo: Nick Madrigal (Scobel Wiggins)




College Notebook: May 9 | College Top 25 | Player/Pitcher of the Week | College Player Database

One could argue that this weekend's series between Pac-12 foes Stanford and Oregon State is the biggest of the year. It pits the No. 2 and 3 teams against one another on the Beavers' home turf in Corvallis in what is sure to be a raucous crowd. Stanford currently has a somewhat commanding lead in the conference standings with a near-perfect 17-4 record, as Oregon State (14-6-1) would need to sweep to vault ahead of the Cardinal, which is exactly what they did to Stanford a year ago.

No. 1 Florida faces yet another ranked opponent with No. 20 Georgia coming to town, and the ACC has a spotlight series of their own between familiar Coastal Division foes North Carolina and Duke. In the SEC Ole Miss, Arkansa, Texas A&M and Kentucky all have tough assignments as they try to get back to their winning ways; Ole Miss hosts Auburn, Arkansas and A&M play one another in Fayetteville and Kentucky hosts Mississippi State.

One of the bigger matchups in college baseball will occur in Hattiesburg, Miss., as Southern Miss hosts Conference USA opponent Louisiana Tech. Below we take a look at this along with Stanford/Oregon State, among a few other topics, as the regular season for 2018 winds down.

Stay tuned to Perfect Game over the weekend as Jheremy Brown will be in Hartford and Storrs, Conn., and Boston, Mass. to provide reports from Houston at UConn and UNC-Wilmington at Northeastern.


Top 25 in Action
Rk. Team Opponent Location
1 Florida home vs. No. 20 Georgia Gainesville, Fla.
2 Stanford at No. 3 Oregon State Corvallis, OR
3 Oregon State home vs. No. 2 Stanford Corvallis, OR
4 NC State home vs. Wake Forest Raleigh, NC
5 Clemson home vs. Austin Peay Clemson, SC
6 Ole Miss home vs. No. 16 Auburn Oxford, MS
7 Southern Miss home vs. Louisiana Tech Hattiesburg, MS
8 Arkansas home vs. No. 21 Texas A&M Fayetteville, AR
9 Texas Tech Does not play NA
10 North Carolina at No. 11 Duke Durham, NC
11 Duke home vs. No. 10 North Carolina Durham, NC
12 East Carolina home vs. Cincinnati Greenville, NC
13 Minnesota home vs. Michigan State Minneapolis, MN
14 Texas Does not play NA
15 Florida State home vs. Mount St. Mary's Tallahassee, FL
16 Auburn at No. 6 Ole Miss Oxford, MS
17 Kentucky home vs. Mississippi State Lexington, KY
18 UCLA at Washington Seattle, WA
19 Indiana at Nebraska Lincoln, NE
20 Georgia at No. 1 Florida Gainesville, FL
21 Texas A&M at No. 8 Arkansas Fayetteville, AR
22 South Florida at Wichita State Wichita, KS
23 Stetson at Florida Gulf Coast Fort Myers, FL
24 UConn home vs. Houston Hartford, Storrs, CT
25 Tennessee Tech home vs. Eastern Kentucky Cookeville, TN


Series of the Season

It's hard to script a better matchup than the one set to be played in Corvallis this weekend as the second-ranked Stanford Cardinal travels to play the third-ranked Oregon State Beavers. Stanford, at 17-4 in the Pac-12 and 38-6 overall, has the edge over Oregon State (14-6-1, 37-7-1), but it's by a pretty slim margin, and regardless of the outcome of this series it would seem as though both programs will be hosting a Regional in early June.

The two teams appear to be evenly matched. Oregon State has only two series blemishes on their near-perfect record this season, losing on the road to both Utah and Arizona. Stanford only has one, with a series loss at UCLA. Stanford has the RPI edge, with the second-best ranking in the nation as compared to OSU's ninth-best mark. For as good as Oregon State's pitching was a year ago, it's their lethal lineup one-through-nine that is stealing the headlines this year, while few programs pitch and play defense as well as Stanford does.

That said, bragging rights are on the line. Not only did Oregon State sweep Stanford last season as part of their magical run to Omaha, they have swept Stanford five of the last seven years and have won the series each of those seasons. To put it another way, Stanford has only two wins in 21 games against Oregon State since 2010. One more sweep for the Beavers this season would put them at the top of the Pac-12 standings.

Second baseman Nick Madrigal has picked up where he left off since returning from injury, batting .396 (21-for-53) in the last 12 games helping to solidify and already potent and well-balanced offense. Staff ace Luke Heimlich has been dominant during that time as well, recording double-digit strikeouts and picking up the win in each of his last four outings to push his record to 11-1 on the year.

Stanford has avoided the let down series loss to this point of the year, as even their one such loss came at the hands of a ranked opponent, UCLA, on their home turf in Los Angeles. Will Matthiessen was named the National Player of the Week for what he did against Utah last week, out-scoring the Utes in Salt Lake City 43-10. The weekend trio of Tristan Beck, Kris Bubic and Erik Miller is now a combined 18-4 and Andrew Daschbach has quietly put up huge numbers (.304-14-54) at the plate.

Both teams are coming off of midweek tuneup shutout victories – Stanford over Santa Clara, their sixth shutout victory of the year, and Oregon State over Oregon, their third – looking to build upon their already impressive resumes. Will Stanford's top-ranked pitching (2.54 team ERA) be able to shut down Oregon State's bats (.321 team batting average) and earn a series victory for the first time since 2010, or will Oregon State's Pac-12 dominance continue? Stay tuned.

Litmus Test

When putting together the most recent update to the Perfect Game College Top 25 a very simple and honest question came to mind: is Southern Miss really the seventh-best team in the nation?

The question begins with the conference they play in, Conference USA, who by league have the 11th-best RPI overall. Southern Miss has the 34th-best RPI in the nation, the second-highest rated team in the league behind FAU at 31. At 19-4 the Eagles have a commanding lead in the conference and already have a series win over second place Florida Atlantic (15-7-1) in Boca Raton. This weekend Southern Miss hosts Louisiana Tech, who are just behind FAU with a 16-8 league mark, and they finish the year on the road against a struggling Marshall squad.

Southern Miss is coming off three consecutive weekend sweeps over Middle Tennessee State, Old Dominion and UAB, and they have yet to lose a weekend series. Their season of course opened with a loud statement, sweeping Mississippi State, all of which came off of a season in which they went 50-16 overall. That success led to them hosting a Regional, seeing their season come to an end in Super Regional play at the hands of the same Bulldogs they exacted revenge upon to open the 2018 season.

While they lost a lot of talent from last year's squad they got two key pieces back, giving them a fair amount of star power. Closer-turned-ace Nick Sandlin has been fantastic all season long, receiving weekly consideration for National Pitcher of the Week honors thanks to a 7-0 season in which he has posted a 0.88 ERA with two complete game shutouts and a 106-to-10 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 72 innings of work. Matt Wallner, an All-American a season ago as a freshman, and Luke Reynolds, a transfer from Mississippi State, gives Southern Miss a very formidable 1-2 punch in the middle of their batting order.

Louisiana Tech has a pretty deep staff, with four starters that have accrued at least 11 starts and 60 innings this year to go along with a deep supporting cast of bullpen arms. Their 3.06 team ERA is ninth-best in the nation, and they have won six out of their eight C-USA series to this point of the year, not to mention their impressive showing at the Frisco College Classic early in the season.

For Southern Miss they're going to need some help in addition to finishing strong to even have a chance to host a Regional yet again this year due to their lower RPI. But they do have quite a few positive attributes in their favor when it comes to passing the eye test.

OVC Sluggers

Fireworks are sure to fly in Cookeville, Tenn., this weekend as 25th-ranked Tennessee Tech hosts Eastern Kentucky as two of the Ohio Valley Conference's better programs. At 22-2 in conference and 41-6 overall, coming off of a huge midweek win over Vanderbilt, Tennessee Tech boasts the nation's top offense, and no team is going to catch them at this point in the season. All nine of their regular hitters are batting over .320 and a pair of those hitters, Chase Chambers and Kevin Strohschein, are over .400. They have hit 120 doubles and 106 home runs as a team this season, bludgeoning their opponents, while the pitching staff has been good enough to keep the Golden Eagles in games.

For as good as so many of their hitters are, its Strohschein that steals the show, a talented slugger who was named an All-American after his dynamic freshman season two years ago. He didn't fare quite as well as a sophomore, but has rebounded in a big way this year.

Eastern Kentucky has a strong offense of their own, with six regulars batting over .300. They too have a star slugger in Alex Holderbach, who was the National Player of the Week last week and currently leads the nation in RBI with 70. In fact, he and Strohschein are ranked fairly close in several national run-producing categories including RBI (Strohschein has 54), slugging (.735 for Holderbach, .716 for Strohschein), home runs (17 to 15) and total bases (136 to 151 – Strohschein leads the nation in this category).

Tennessee Tech's success could have potential postseason ramifications, as they seem to be a lock to earn a bid, whether they win the conference tournament or not, something to keep in mind as the tournament week approaches in a couple of weeks.
 
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