Southeast Missouri State baseball team enters final regular-season series with magic number of 2

The Southeast Missouri State baseball team's objective won't change when it begins its final regular-season series on the road against Belmont today: win the series.

But winning the three-game series, which begins with a game at 5 p.m. at Rose Park in Nashville, Tennessee, has much more riding on it than usual.

If Southeast wins two of its three games against Belmont the Redhawks will claim their second consecutive Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship outright.They need just one win or a loss by Morehead State to secure a share of the title.

Southeast third-year coach Steve Bieser believes it's a positive that his team hasn't already locked up the title. Last year the Redhawks clinched with a win over Tennessee Tech in the series opener on May 9. Southeast won that series before stepping out of conference play for its final four games. This year Belmont is the only opponent that remains before the OVC tournament begins on May 20.

"You've still got to go out and play with that sense of urgency and that's something that teams can lose," Bieser said during his team's practice on Tuesday. "I thought we lost that a little last year because it seemed like almost two weeks before we got to the tournament that we really didn't have that edge. I think definitely we're going to have to have an edge to go in and win the series at Belmont, and I think that's big for the tournament because when you get into that first tournament game there's nerves and there's a lot of things going on in guys' heads. When you continue to play those types of games all through the course of the season I think that helps you as a team."

Southeast was handed its only OVC series loss of the season two weekends ago against TTU.

Game 2 of this weekend's series vs. the Bruins is set for 5 p.m. Friday with the series finale beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday.

The Redhawks (31-20, 20-7 OVC) can also claim the title outright if second-place Morehead State (33-19, 18-9 OVC) loses two games to Murray State and third-place SIU Edwardsville (18-27, 17-10 OVC) loses one game to Eastern Illinois.

"We're not looking around and expecting anybody else to help us," Bieser said. "We're going to have to win it outright on our own."

Belmont is 26-25 on the season and 14-12 in conference. The Bruins defeated defending national champion Vanderbilt twice this season. Belmont topped the then-No. 4/5 ranked Commodores 3-2 on April 14 and won 4-1 exactly two weeks later when Vanderbilt was ranked No. 6 and 10 in national polls.

"They've shown that they can play against some of the best competition and win," Bieser said. "They're a very high-powered offense and they're going to be really tough to pitch to the top of their lineup. They have a lot of accomplished hitters. It's going to be a tough series. It's going to be one of the toughest series we've played all season long."

The Bruins are fifth in the conference standings currently and the top six teams make the tournament. Southeast, Morehead State and SIUE have all clinched their spots.

TTU (15-12), Austin Peay (15-15) and Jacksonville State (13-14) are all competing with Belmont for the final three spots.

"I think it's more of just the talent level they have and the problem is they're fighting mad right now," Bieser said of the challenge his team faces. "They're hungry to get into the tournament and set themselves up in a good position, and we've run across that lately and when you come across those teams that have that type of reason to be playing extremely well they present problems, so we've got to make sure that we can go in there and match their intensity."

Both Southeast and Belmont boast prolific offenses. The Redhawks rank sixth in Division I baseball with 403 runs while the Bruins are one spot behind them with 391. Both teams are in the Top 10 in runs per game, averaging upwards of seven runs.

Belmont is second in the nation with 66 home runs while Southeast's 57 are tied for eighth.

The Bruins have a batting average of .295 (41st) while Southeast's .302 average is 20th. Both teams are in the Top 20 in doubles, Top 15 in on base percentage and Top 10 in slugging percentage.

Bruins senior outfielder Drew Ferguson's .387 average is third in the OVC. He's third in slugging percentage (.686), on base percentage (.480), hits (79) and hit by pitch (14). His 63 runs scored are second in the conference and he has the fourth most RBIs with 55. He's tied for the most triples in the OVC with four, second in doubles (23) as well as stolen bases (24) and steal attempts (25).

Senior infielder Matt Beaty leads the league with 68 RBIs. He has the league's sixth-highest batting average at .374, fourth-highest slugging percentage at .659 and seventh-highest on base percentage at .459. He's doubled 21 times and has 11 home runs.

Senior left-handed pitcher Dan Ludwig will likely start tonight's game. He's 4-4 with a 4.74 ERA. Opponents are batting .286 against him and he's third in the conference with 72 strikeouts.

Junior righty Aaron Quillen and senior lefty Patrick McGrath usually start Games 2 and 3, respectively, for the Bruins.

Quillen's 3.72 ERA is fourth-best in the conference and he's third with opponents batting just .233 against him. He's struck out 71 batters and has a 4-4 record.

McGrath, who started and won both midweek games against Vanderbilt, has a record of 7-3 and an ERA of 4.52 and is holding opponents to a .256 average.

Southeast junior lefties Joey Lucchesi and Alex Winkelman are expected to start tonight and Friday, respectively. Lucchesi's 3.18 ERA is the best in the conference along with his opponent's batting average of .192. Winkelman ranks third with an ERA of 3.69 and fourth with opponents batting .234. The duo are tied for the league lead in strikeouts with 80.

Senior righty Travis Hayes (7-6) is probable to start Saturday's contest. The defending OVC co-pitcher of the year has a 5.24 ERA and opponents are hitting .312 against him. He's recorded 67 strikeouts.

The trip to Nashville will mark the third year in a row that the Redhawks have played at Belmont. Last year's series was scheduled to be played in Cape Girardeau but was moved due to weather.

The Redhawks are familiar with Rose Park, which Bieser considers a pitcher's ballpark, and how its turf field plays.

"Really it's going to depend because if you play the day games this time of the year you never know which way the wind's going to blow and I think if the wind's blowing out then it becomes an offensive-type day because both teams have accomplished offenses," Bieser said. "It's just so hard to tell and I think what we've got to do is just expect anything -- whether it's a pitcher's duel or whether it's a high-scoring game we've got to be ready to play either one of those games. Something that we've been pretty good at is playing the high-scoring game. It's the low-scoring game that I think we need more experience, and I thought we got a lot of experience this weekend just from playing a lot of one-run games. It's frustrating that we're not winning that one-run game. It's good to be playing tight games like that this time of the year, now we've got to learn how to win those tight games."

The Redhawks are coming off a three-game sweep by Indiana State. Southeast defeated then-No. 21 Missouri 8-5 on Tuesday before the three weekend losses. Each loss was by one run, including a 14-inning walk-off loss on Saturday.

Bieser felt that the series would've gone differently had his team not allowed the Sycamores to erase a four-run Southeast lead in the bottom of the eighth to take the lead for good in the series opener Friday night, and it's led to a new message from the coach.

"I know that -- whether you want to say it or not -- people start looking around at that point and wondering is there someone to blame or wanting to blame somebody rather than just owning up to it and moving onto the next day," Bieser said. "We can't continue to look back at what's happened up to this point. We've got to continue to look forward and that's kind of the lesson to the guys. We're looking forward. What we've done up to this point is fine and dandy, but now we've just got to continue to look forward.