OMAHA, Nebraska – McNeese baseball will step out of Southland Conference play this weekend and head to the promise land of college baseball when the Cowboys visit Creighton for a three-game series at TD Ameritrade Park, the home of the College World Series.
Friday's game will carry an 11 a.m. first pitch and will be broadcast live on Cox Sports TV, channel 42 in Lake Charles for Suddenlink customers. Saturday's game will carry a 6:30 start time and will be streamed live on
www.netnebraska.org while Sunday's game will begin at noon and will be streamed live on
www.GoCreighton.com. All links will be posted on the McNeese athletics website at
www.McNeeseSports.com.
Updates can also be followed on the office McNeese baseball Twitter page at @McNeeseBaseball.
The Cowboys (31-16) are coming off a 4-1 road loss to Louisiana-Lafayette on Wednesday night, the team's third consecutive loss. McNeese is ranked No. 45 in the latest RPI rankings and projected to be a No. 3 seed at the Baton Rouge NCAA Regional.
Creighton (22-19) had a rough start of the season, starting out 1-8 but has since going 21-11 and has won 14 of its last 17 games.
The Blue Jays are coming off a 4-0 loss to Nebraska on Wednesday in their last outing.
McNeese is expected to stick with its normal Friday-Saturday starting pitchers in LHP
Austin Sanders and RHP
Rhett Deaton. Head coach
Justin Hill has not determined a starter for Sunday.
Sanders is 6-2 on the season with a 3.46 ERA. He's expected to go up against Creighton RHP Rollie Lacy who is 3-2 with a 3.07 mark.
Deaton is 7-2 on the season with a 3.64 ERA and will be matched up against LHP Jeff Albrecht (5-3, 2.77). Creighton will also start RHP Keith Rogalla (2-3, 3.21 ERA) on Sunday.
Offensively, the Cowboys are tied for the Southland Conference lead in hitting with a .304 team batting average, led by left fielder
Shane Selman who's seventh in the conference with a .357 mark. Selman also leads the team with 48 runs batted in (second in the league) and is tied with third baseman
Matt Gallier with 11 home runs (third-most in the conference).
The Blue Jays, who are a member of the Big East Conference, are hitting .262 as a team as left fielder Parker Upton tops the squad as the only player hitting above .300 with a .313 average.
The two teams have met twice before, in 1992 and 1995. McNeese won both of those meetings, 10-8 on Feb. 29, 1992 and 9-6 on Feb. 21, 1995. Both of those games were part of McNeese's Lake Area Classic.
Creighton has played one other Southland Conference team this year having been swept in a three-game series at Abilene Christian in early March.
