CLINTON, Miss. --- The Mississippi College baseball team will play host to Belhaven University on Wednesday night at 6:00 p.m. at Frierson Field.
The Choctaws (9-17) and the Blazers (23-12) will be meeting for the 118th time with Belhaven holding a 75-43 advantage. While BU won the season series in 2014, two of the three games were decided by one run, including an 8-7 victory at Frierson on March 25th that saw
Tate Ratcliff score the game-winner on a walk-off walk by
Zach Evans.
MC comes into the mid-week game off a tough weekend series at West Alabama, falling three times to the Tigers. Senior
Brooks Fortenberry held a potent UWA offense to just three earned runs in 7.0 innings on Friday night.
Freshman
Kyle Smith (.531) is the team's leading hitter and has started six straight games since an injury has sidelined senior
Akiko Thompson for the last two weeks. Smith has four stolen bases and has scored six runs on the year.
Sophomore
Hunter Bolin is hitting .383 with a team-high nine stolen bases this season. The Starkville native has already driven in 17 runs this season after posting nine RBI in 2014.
Junior
Colton Caver leads the team in hits (37) and doubles (9), while junior
Hunter Hall has a team-high 19 RBI.
The Blazers have won seven of their last eight games, including a 9-0 shutout of Tougaloo on Monday night at Smith-Wills Stadium. Belhaven is a member of the Southern States Athletic Conference in the NAIA. They will be making the move to Division III and the American Southwest Conference, a league MC was a part of for 18 years, next academic year.
Will Mullen (.368) is the team's leading hitter this season, ranking second on the squad with seven doubles. Emilio DeSilva (.347) is second on the team in hitting and ranks second in runs scored (36) and third in RBI (25).
Adam Kowalczyk (.333) leads the team with eight doubles, six home runs and 37 RBI, while Reagan Rutledge has scored a team-high 38 runs and leads the way with five triples and 30 stolen bases.
The Blazers have a team-ERA of 4.18 this season with 219 strikeouts in 290.1 innings pitched. Joey Harris (2-0, 2.30 ERA) and Michael Wurster (2-0, 2.35 ERA) made mid-week starts for Belhaven last week.
