Rogers Rewind: Everything that caught my attention in Week Four • D1Baseball
Here's everything that caught my attention in Week Four, including Alabama's Justin Lebron, K-State's Maximus Martin and much more.
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The Southland Conference is making a move … The league was already front of mind earlier this week after we featured UT Rio Grande Valley in my latest spotlight. The Vaqueros, by the way, swept New Orleans over the weekend and are No. 1 in the nation in RPI with an 11-2 record. Kudos to Derek Matlock and Co., for handling the limelight well in the Big Easy over the weekend. Most of this league has continued to take steps forward this spring. For instance, Houston Christian is off to a 9-4 start and are 5-1 in the league with a new coach, Lamar is 12-5, McNeese is 10-3 overall and Southeastern Louisiana made a statement over the weekend by hitting the road and taking a series from Memphis. The Lions are 12-3 overall, 23 in the RPI and have one of the nation’s premier arms in senior Brennan Stuprich. Stuprich has started four games for the Lions and has tallied an 0.75 ERA in 24 innings, along with 37 strikeouts, five walks and a ridiculously low .141 OBA. Conventional wisdom suggests some of these RPIs will go down as the season continues, but that doesn’t mean the league isn’t making some serious strides. It most definitely is right now, and we’re taking notice.
Coastal Carolina had its mettle tested, and succeeded … How about the job first-year head coach Kevin Schnall is doing so far this spring? The Chanticleers entered the season on the cusp of the D1Baseball Top 25 rankings, and have little doubt thus far, going 4-0 opening weekend with two wins against Kansas State team that has turned out to be solid. The Chants went 2-1 at the Jax College Baseball Classic before doing a clean sweep of Rutgers at home. But I was most impressed with what Schnall’s club did this past weekend in Greenville. After being struck out 19 times by ECU starting pitcher Ethan Norby in the series opener, it would be easy for a team to be shell-shocked the rest of the weekend. Well, easy for someone not named Coastal Carolina. The Chants were extremely impressive the rest of the weekend in a series win, beating the Pirates 9-1 in the second game behind seven shutout innings from righthanded pitcher Cam Flukeym and a big afternoon at the plate from Blake Barthol. The Chants won the series finale, 4-3, behind a strong start from Riley Eikhoff, who struck out three and allowed just one run on six hits in 5.1 innings of work. In addition to it being a great road series win, the Chants now enter Sun Belt play in excellent shape with an RPI of 15 and several high-quality wins
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