USF Preview
May 17, 2006 04:51 PM | General
May 17, 2006
GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia doesn’t have the pressure of making the eight-team Big East tournament that begins next Tuesday, but there is still plenty riding on this weekend’s three-game, season-ending series with South Florida.
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| Stan Posluszny watches his second-inning hit sail over the right field fence against Akron Tuesday night. Posluszny is now three home runs shy of tying Tim McCabe's school record of 35.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
If the Mountaineers can win a couple of games against the Bulls and assure themselves of a fourth or fifth place finish, that means WVU won’t have to face either Notre Dame’s or Connecticut’s top pitcher in the first round of the tournament.
South Florida, meanwhile, is fighting for its post-season life. The Bulls head into Morgantown having lost nine of their last 10 and 11 of their last 13. USF is currently eighth in the conference standings a game ahead of Georgetown, which took two of three at South Florida at the end of April.
Most recently, the Bulls dropped a 9-2 decision to Stetson on Tuesday to fall to 21-32 overall.
South Florida’s only win this month came at St. John’s last weekend when ace pitcher Casey Hudspeth held the Red Storm to two earned runs on five hits through eight innings, striking out 11 and walking one. Hudspeth improved to 6-6 with the victory and shows a 4.83 earned run average and 97 strike outs in 85 2/3 innings.
Daniel Thomas started game two last weekend against St. John’s and lasted just 2 2/3 innings before being knocked out in a 19-0 loss. Thomas shows a 2-6 record and a 4.90 earned run average in 75 1/3 innings of work.
Davis Bilardello took the loss in game three at St. John’s, dropping his record to 1-6. Bilardello has the best earned run average on the Bulls staff (4.50) in 76 innings of work.
Overall, South Florida’s pitching staff shows a 4.97 earned run average and opponents are batting .291 against Bulls pitchers.
Kris Howell, a senior designated hitter, is the only USF player hitting better than .300 at .315. Howell shows 63 hits in 200 at-bats with a home run and 20 RBI.
Brian Baisely, a senior catcher, leads South Florida with five home runs. He is batting .299 with 27 RBI.
South Florida is hitting .268 as a team -- nearly 80 points below West Virginia’s league-leading .344 average.
The Mountaineers (34-18) have scored at least 10 runs in four of their last six games and have won five of six, sweeping a three-game series at Cincinnati last weekend. West Virginia has had 39 double-digit-hit games this year including four games of 20 or more hits.
WVU batters pounded out 50 hits in a three-game series at Cincinnati last weekend and added 10 runs and 10 hits in a win against Akron on Tuesday night.
Senior Casey Bowling leads the Mountaineers with a .410 batting average in 183 at-bats. All nine hitters in West Virginia’s starting lineup are batting better than .300.
Senior Stan Posluszny smacked his ninth home run of the year against Akron Tuesday and now shows 32 for his career, second to Tim McCabe’s school record of 35. Posluszny has knocked in a team-best 55 runs and has boosted his batting average to .336.
Junior Justin Jenkins is just four hits shy of breaking Mark Landers’ school record of 91 hits established in 1994. Jenkins shows a .385 batting average with a team-leading 10 home runs to go with 47 runs batted in.
No. 9 hitter Adam White is fourth on the team in batting with a .376 average and leads the conference with 19 stolen bases in 21 attempts. White also has a team-leading 14 sacrifice hits.
The Mountaineers got exceptional pitching last weekend against Cincinnati, their three lefthanders Matt Yurish, Ryan Hill and Kenny Durst limiting the Bearcats to just one earned run in 20 1/3 innings.
In fact, the three did so well that West Virginia did not have to use sophomore lefthander Eric Saffell, who leads the team with a 3.43 earned run average and a 6-1 record in 11 appearances.
Yurish lowered his earned run average to 3.57 and now shows a 5-2 record, while Durst evened his record to 4-4 while dropping his ERA to 4.53. No pitcher on West Virginia’s staff has appeared in more than 15 games or pitched more than 70 2/3 innings (righthander Dan Leatherman leads the staff in innings pitched).
Overall, West Virginia’s pitching staff ERA is 4.52 and teams are batting .269 against them.
Both Thursday’s and Friday’s games will start at 7 pm, while Saturday’s series finale will get underway at noon. All three games can be heard locally on WAJR or on the Internet through CSTV All Access.
In other league action this weekend, seventh-place Cincinnati plays three against third-place St. John’s, ninth-place Georgetown plays three at 11th-place Pitt, fourth-place Louisville is at No. 12 Seton Hall, first-place Notre Dame is at 10th-place Villanova, and sixth-place Rutgers travels to second-place Connecticut.
Briefly:
West Virginia has six pitchers that have thrown more than 40 innings this year and none with more than 70 2/3 innings.
