Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Baseball visits Wichita State for three-game weekend series
03/29/2012 | 12:00:00 | Baseball
March 29, 2012
By Scott Gierman
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill . - The Southern Illinois baseball team begins a stretch of four consecutive road games with a three-game series against the Wichita State Shockers, which starts on Friday at 6:30 p.m. It will be the Salukis first conference road trip of 2012.
GAME INFORMATION
Date: Friday, March 30-Sunday, April 1
Time: Fri.-6:30 p.m., Sat.-2 p.m., Sun.-1 p.m.
Location: Wichita, Kan.
Site: Eck Stadium
Radio: Fri.-WVZA 105.1-FM, Sat. and Sun.-WRFX 1300-AM
Video: None
Live Stats: Provided by Wichita State
SIU Game Notes
Wichita State Game Notes
FRIDAY'S STARTER Cody Forsythe will make his seventh start of the season and the 25th of his SIU career. In his last start he lasted eight innings and earned his first win of the year. Forsythe allowed five runs, only three of them earned, in his longest outing of the season and struck out a career high 11 batters in a 6-5 win over Bradley.
WICHITA SERIES NOTES Wichita State leads the all-time series, 90-31. The two teams first met in 1978. The Shockers have taken two out of three games in each of the last three series against Southern Illinois. The last time the Salukis won a series against Wichita State was 2006 when the Dawgs won two of three in Wichita.
SCOUTING THE SHOCKERS Witchita State snapped a three-game losing streak on Wednesday with a victory over South Alabama. The Shockers, who were picked to finish third in The Valley, are 15-13 on the season and playing their first MVC series of the year. Wichita State returns six starters from last year's team, which finished 39-26 overall and second in the MVC. WSU is fourth in the league with a .288 team batting average and is lead by first baseman Johnny Coy. He is hitting .359 with five home runs and 33 RBI. The Shockers 3.30 team ERA is third best in the conference. Friday starter Josh Smith ranks 10th in the MVC with a 2.97 ERA.
BIG 5-0 The next win will be Ken Henderson's 50th career victory as a head coach. The Salukis are 49-53 (13-11 in the MVC) all-time with Henderson as head coach. Henderson was named head coach this past summer after spending the 2011 season as the interim head coach. He also guided the Salukis to a 12-8 record in 20 games as interim head coach in 1994 following the midseason departure of head coach Sam Riggleman.
BROCK STEADY Last Saturday against Bradley, Brock Harding made his first start at second base in a month. He has started the last three games at second and recorded a pair of hits in each of those games. Harding has a six-game hit streak and is hitting 9-for-20 over that stretch to raise his average from .239 to .293.
CRACKING THE TOP 10 With his home run in Wednesday's game, Chris Serritella now has 23 in his career. That ties him for 9th on the school's all-time list with Greg Andrews and Jim Pitchford. Serritella's next home run will move him into a seventh place tie on the list. The all-time leader is Robert Jones, who hit 36 homers from 1983-86. Serritella is tied for the conference lead with six home runs on the season.
LOOKING FOR THE BIG HIT Southern Illiois is hitting .292 this season with runners in scoring position. However, in the last five games, SIU is hitting .200 with runners in scoring position. Over that stretch, the Dawgs have stranded 43 runners on base. Twenty of those runners have been stranded over the past two games.
ERRORS Out of 291 Division I teams, only two have committed more errors than Southern Illinois. As of the start of this week, the Salukis .937 team fielding percentage ranked 288th in the nation. SIU has committed at least one error in every game it has played this season and committed multiple errors in all but six of those games.
WEEKEND WARRIORS SIU is 13-6 in 19 weekend games and 1-5 in six weekday games in 2012. As a team Southern Illinois is hitting .315 and averaging 7.2 runs per game in weekend games. In weekday games, the Salukis are hitting .236 and averaging 4.0 runs per game. The Salukis have a 4.26 ERA on the weekend and a 6.23 ERA during the week.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY STARTERS Cameron Maldonado will make his 22nd career start with SIU on Saturday. In his last outing, Maldonado allowed one earned run in seven innings and struck out a season high seven batters on his way to his third win. Maldonado began his college career with Wichita State in 2009 and went 1-1 with a 5.60 ERA in 17.2 innings. He allowed four earned runs in 4.2 innings last season in his first start against his former school. After starting his SIU career 4-0, junior Nathan Dorris has allowed 12 earned runs in 7.2 innings over his last two starts to drop his record to 4-2. The Salukis are 10-2 in games started by Maldonado and Dorris.
TROGGIO'S HOT STREAK Junior Rennie Troggio has started the last five games in centerfield. He is 10-for-19 during his current six-game hitting streak. Troggio has multiple hits in three of those six games, and hit his first double of the year Wednesday against Murray State.
TOP HITTERS Chris Serritella and Austin Montgomery are tied for second in the league with 39 hits, one shy of the conference lead. That puts both of them on pace for 87 hits at the end of the regular season, which would be fourth most in school history. Kevin Koski holds the school record with 92 hits in 2005.
LOOKING AHEAD Following the series with Wichita State, SIU will head to Murray State for a rematch with the Thoroughbreds on Tuesday. Next weekend, the Salukis will host Evansville at Abe Martin Field.
