For the third straight weekend, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff welcomes an SWAC team to the Torii Hunter Baseball Complex.
The Golden Lions will host a three-game series against Alcorn State at 3 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. It will conclude a stretch of three consecutive home series to start conference play with the next two being away from home.
UAPB (10-17, 4-2 SWAC) is seeking its second weekend series victory of the season. The Golden Lions swept Mississippi Valley State to open conference play but lost two of three games to Florida A&M last week.
Coach Logan Stout said the Golden Lions need to play clean baseball with high intensity to pick up their second series win.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“If you look at our season, I was telling our players, if you look at all the games we’ve lost, we made errors or didn’t throw strikes,” Stout said. “Every game we’ve played clean baseball, we’ve won, even against really good teams. Hopefully, that’s what they’ll carry over Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
Alcorn State (7-19, 1-5) is still searching for its first series win. The Braves own two wins against Division I opponents thus far: a nonconference, extra-inning win against Jackson State and a win against Alabama A&M in a series the Bulldogs won two of three.
The Golden Lions should be rewarded if they have good plate discipline this weekend. The Braves have issued the most walks, 212, of any SWAC team thus far, and their 62 hit batters is the second most. UAPB batters have walked 101 times this season, the fourth fewest in the league, but have a chance to improve that number. Alcorn enters the weekend with the lowest team batting average in the SWAC (.232), the second-lowest team earned-run average (10.32), and the worst fielding percentage (.931).
UAPB enters the weekend with the ninth-ranked team batting average (.243) and the eighth-ranked fielding percentage (.956) but has the second-best team ERA (5.19).
Friday starter Jalen Porter (2-2, 4.96 ERA) and Saturday starter Kenney Fabian (0-3, 4.41) are two of the nine qualified pitchers in the SWAC with an ERA of less than 5. The only Alcorn pitcher with such an ERA is reliever Hayden Konkler (1-0, 4.60), who has pitched 15 2/3 innings across 11 appearances.
Alcorn has shuffled its weekend rotation throughout the season. Devin Kriley (0-5, 11.50 ERA), a freshman left-hander, and junior right-hander Jacob Wingard (0-4, 12.74) have both started on Fridays. Kriley is coming off his best outing of the season, a five-inning start last Friday against Bethune-Cookman in which he did not allow an earned run, though Bethune-Cookman scored three unearned.
Freshman right-hander Kayden Sutton (1-4, 7.98 ERA) starts on Saturdays for Alcorn. After this series, four of UAPB’s next five weekends will be spent on the road.