HICKORY, N.C. - With the regular season in the rear-view mirror, the Lenoir-Rhyne Baseball Team will begin their postseason aspirations with the SAC Tournament on Friday, April 28, when they face Carson-Newman at 3:00 p.m.
The Bears finished with a 15-9 conference record and earned a No. 5 seed for the conference tournament. LR is paired with the SAC Baseball Regular Season Champions and No. 1 seed Newberry, No. 4 Carson-Newman and No. 8 Tusculum. All games will be played at the Smith Road Complex in Newberry, S.C.
LR is the reigning SAC Tournament Champions as they claimed their first postseason title since 2001. In that postseason, the SAC Championship was played on the campus of Newberry College. It was also the last time that the Bears defeated Carson-Newman in the SAC Tournament, which was a 7-6 victory to win the title.
In the re-designed tournament, the opening round will now be a double elimination format. The most efficient route to the championship series would be through three wins, but it might take four victories to advance to the next round. The best-of-three championship set will consist of the two teams that move past the opening round; the series will take place on May 7-8 in Kodak, Tenn.
For LR, it was a rocky end to its conference slate with five consecutive losses in SAC play. Although, the rough stretch should not define one of the best offenses in the conference.
The Bears led the league in multiple offensive statistics, including their 81 home runs. That mark puts them one back of the program-record 82 home runs in the 2022 season. They were also the only team in the conference that reached the century mark with doubles at 109.
Meanwhile, LR led the league in hits (553), runs (434), runs batted in (387), and slugging percentage (.540), making them a scary team at the plate heading into postseason play.
Graduate transfers Tyler McPeak and Blake Bean have had incredible first seasons at Lenoir-Rhyne, the duo each recorded a .365 batting average while combining for 134 hits, 29 doubles, 35 home runs, 101 runs, and 112 runs batted in. On the final day of the regular season, McPeak became the first Bear in program history to tally 18 home runs in a single season, surpassing Evan Taylor's 17 long balls from 2010.
Sal Carricato and Wade Cuda surged towards the end of the season to each record a 1.000+ OPS with a 1.157 and 1.077 mark, respectively. Carricato, a transfer from Long Island, N.Y., also finished the regular season with the best batting average on the squad with a .367 percentage.
The LR pitching has also held a prevalent piece of the Bears season with conference-bests in ERA (3.88) and strikeouts (509), and most of the success has been the cause of a solid bullpen.
Braden Houston has manufactured six saves this season, which has him tied for fourth with the most in a single season. Redshirt Freshman Gavin Marley has also been a bright spot for the Bears in his first competitive season with a 2-0 record and a 1.06 WHIP in 18 appearances.
It is hard not to look past the starting rotation for the Bears of Andrew Patrick, Joshua Lanham and Jackson Reid that have shoved for most of the season.
Patrick, who is the probable starter for the postseason opener on Friday, has been lights out down the stretch by winning four of his last five contests and has struck out at least 10 batters in three of those four wins. Now the redshirt senior did hit a rough patch against Newberry in his last regular season start, but after suffering his first loss of the year against Wingate, he began his four-game winning streak.
After becoming the all-time strikeout leader earlier in April, Lanham looks to return to his early season groove as he tries to put his roller-coaster conference stretch in the past. Meanwhile, for Reid, the redshirt junior looks to bounce back after being given his first loss of the season against Newberry. The Mooresville, N.C. native had the best winning percentage out of any of the weekend starters with a 6-1 mark.
In their all-time meetings in the SAC Tournament, Lenoir-Rhyne is 4-3 against Carson-Newman, 4-4 against Newberry and 2-5 against Tusculum.
As a program, Lenoir-Rhyne is 24-32 all-time in the SAC Tournament. In the Chris Ramirez era, the Bears have a 4-2 SAC Tournament record which included winning four games in the 2022 edition.
With a victory over Carson-Newman, LR will face the winner of the Tusculum-Newberry game at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 29. With a loss, LR would be placed on the brink of elimination and face the loser of the Tusculum-Newberry game at 2:45 p.m. on Saturday, April 29.
Opening Round Schedule (All Games at Newberry, S.C.)
Game #1: No. 5 Lenoir-Rhyne vs. No. 4 Carson-Newman, April 28 at 3:00 p.m.
Game #2: No. 8 Tusculum vs. No. 1 Newberry, April 28 at 6:30 p.m.
Game #3: Game #1 Winner vs. Game #2 Winner, April 29 at 11:00 a.m.
Game #4: Game #1 Loser vs. Game #2 Loser, April 29 at 2:45 p.m.
Game #5: Game #3 Loser vs. Game #4 Winner, April 29 at 6:30 p.m.
Game #6: Game #3 Winner vs. Game #5 Winner, April 30 at 12:00 p.m.
Game #7: Game #6 Loser vs. Game #6 Winner, April 30 at 3:00 p.m. *
* = If Necessary
