LORMAN, Miss. – The Alcorn State University baseball program continues to play a predominantly road-heavy schedule as the Braves travel to Southeastern Louisiana on Wednesday night at 6 p.m. from Pat Kenelly Diamond at Alumni Field.
Alcorn (6-12, 1-4 SWAC) has been the best in the conference in terms of limiting mistakes in the field as its .957 fielding percentage leads all SWAC teams. The purple and gold as a unit are in the upper half of the league in hits (159), hits allowed per nine innings (10.91), homers (10), runs per game (5.9), strikeouts per nine innings pitched (7.1) and triples (6).
Senior starting pitcher
Carlos Lopez enters the game ranked fourth all-time in school history in career strikeouts with 199. He needs 21 more to break Steve Easter's mark of 219 set in 2012 after he tossed 4 in the win over Prairie View on Friday. He has totaled 27 punchouts in 29.1 innings of work in 2019 and will move into third place with five more strikeouts.
Junior
Travaris Cole leads the Braves in batting average (.371), hits (26), RBIs (20), total bases (44), slugging percentage (.629),doubles (4) and home runs (4) while placing second among Alcorn hitters in runs scored (13). Cole has ten multi-hit games, five multi-RBI games and had a massive two-homer, five-RBI game in a 12-1 win over Prairie View on March 16.
Cole had a red-hot series at PVAMU, going 7-for-14 (.500 average) with three homers, seven RBIs, 17 total bases and four runs scored while placing on the national leaderboards in ten different categories. The outfielder is top-five in the conference in regard to batting average (.371), hits per game (1.44), homers (4), slugging percentage (.629), total bases (44) and toughest to strike out (11.7).
- Freshman
Tristin Garcia has been a revelation at the second base position for Alcorn, tying for the club lead in doubles (4), placing second in average (.328) and 21 hits while knocking in 11 RBIs. He is currently riding a nine-game hitting streak and reached base safely in 14 consecutive games.
- Four separate Braves have on-base streaks of five or more as senior
Kirt Cormier fronts the pack (17), followed by
Tristin Garcia (14), junior
Brandon Rembert (8) and freshman
Jaden Smith (6). Garcia, Cormier and
Jaden Smith also boast hit streaks of 9, 8 and 6 respectively.
- Senior
Brandon Barna is 8 hits away from 100 in his career. He'd become the 48th player in school history to reach that milestone. Barna is tops among Braves hitters in doubles (4) and triples (2) while being in the top third for RBIs (11) and hits (18).
- Redshirt junior closer
Austin Atwood has put the finishing touches on a majority team's six victories, as he's second in the SWAC with four saves.
Southeastern Louisiana (7-12, 1-2 Southland) was pegged to finish second in the Southland behind Sam Houston State and garnered three first-place votes.
The Lions have been a .500 ballclub over its past ten games, sweeping a two-game set with Louisiana Monroe before taking one-of-three from Central Arkansas and Oklahoma State.
Kyle Schimpf is the team's only batter hitting above the .300 mark, as he is tops among the green and yellow in hits (23), doubles (4), total bases (30) and slugging (.417) as well as second in RBIs (15).
On the pitching side of things, reliever Grant Upton and starter Corey Gaconi have been the stars, posting 1.59 and 3.03 ERAs respectively. Gaconi has been piling up the strikeouts, hurling 33 in 32.2 innings.
Alcorn and Southeastern Louisiana met twice in Hammond during the 2018 season with the Lions winning both contests by a combined margin of 16-2.
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