Two of the top baseball teams in the nation will play for a berth in the NCAA Division II World Series.
The No. 5 UT Tyler Patriots (46-11) meet the No. 2 Angelo State Rams (48-8) in the South Central Regional super series this weekend in San Angelo.
The best-of-three series begins on Thursday with a 7 p.m. start. Game 2 is slated for 7 p.m. Friday. If a third game is necessary it is scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday.
The winner of the series advances to the NCAA Championship Tournament, which is scheduled for May 30 through June 7 in Cary, North Carolina.
Angelo St. leads the series with the Patriots 13-11. The two clubs have met five times this season with the Rams having won the last three games. The teams met Feb. 7-9 in Tyler with the Patriots winning the first two games (5-3, 6-2) and Angelo State the next two (4-2, 10-8). They met in the Lone Star Conference Tournament on May 9 in San Angelo with the Rams winning 3-2 in 12 innings.
UT Tyler swept through its half of the South Central Regional, eliminating sixth-seeded MSU Denver 12-3 before beating third-seeded Colorado Mesa twice (10-4, 14-4) to advance to the South Central Super Regional.
The Rams defeated Lubbock Christian (11-3) and St. Edward’s (1-0, 8-7) in their regional in San Angelo.
At the plate, the Patriots are second in the LSC with a .347 team batting average and are within the top three in the LSC in numerous other offensive categories including runs scored (539), hits (643), doubles (128), home runs (67) and RBIs (485).
The Patriots’ pitching staff has the top ERA in the LSC at 3.66. That is among the tops in the nation. The Patriots 1-2 combo of Rawley Hector and Kyle Froehlich have proven to be dangerous against batting lineups as they’ve each allowed a .253 batting average with Froehlich allowing just 17 total runs this season while Hector has collected 78 strikeouts. It does not stop there as Nick Niebur and Garrett Arredondo are the major weapons out of the bullpen with the former having a 1.43 ERA and the latter leading the team with seven saves.
For the Rams, Jacob Guerrero reached base safely in 53 of 55 games he has appeared in this season. Ethan Flodstrom has reached base 24-straight games.
Justin Harris is one of six batters in the LSC where more than 50% of their hits have been extra base hits; 55 hits (21 doubles, 8 home runs) and seven Ram pitchers have registered a save: Luke Olson (6), Josh Reed (3), Caleb Heuertz (2), Keene Kreusler (1), Scott Ellis (1), Jude Cook (1) and Clayton Broeder (1).
Originally published on tylerpaper.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.