HAMMOND, La. – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team will be entering into a key weekend when it takes on Southeastern in the final regular season series of the year Thursday through Saturday at Pat Kenelly Diamond.
Thursday and Friday's games were both originally scheduled to be played under the lights with 6 p.m. first pitches both nights, but Friday will be moved up to 3 p.m. due to pending weather. Saturday's season finale will get started at 2 p.m. All games will be available to watch live on ESPN+.
It will be the final opportunity for the Islanders (21-31) to secure their spot in the Southland Conference Tournament next weekend, as they will look to extend their stay in Hammond through next week when the championships get underway Wednesday, hosted by Southeastern.
They are currently in seventh place with only the top-eight clinching a berth into the postseason tournament. The Islanders are two games ahead of ninth-place HCU as final seeding is still up for grabs throughout the whole standings ahead of the weekend.
"It's an exciting weekend for us and all of college baseball," said head coach
Scott Malone. "So many teams are moving and fighting for positioning as we head closer to the postseason. But, we need to worry about us. We need to go out and play better baseball in all facets. We need to create runs and defend the field behind our pitchers."
In conference play, the Islanders have produced some clutch hitters with senior
Sebastian Trinidad batting a .341 to rank himself tenth in the league. He is tied for fifth with seventh doubles knocked against Southland opponents, with junior
Chance Reisdorph tied alongside him.
Reisdorph is 12
th in batting average in SLC play at a .333 but checks in at seventh with 21 RBIs. Part of that comes from his four sacrifice flies, the second most among league batters.
The two are in the team's top-five for hitting on the year, with junior
Issac Webb leading the way at a .342 mark. He is recently coming off a 2-for-3 night with one run and one RBI against UTRGV, extending him to 21 multi-hit games on the year, the most on the team and the only Islander to have over 20 games with 2+ hits.
Junior
Garrett Gruell has been a heavy hitter for the Islanders as well, batting a .303 on the season and leading the team in home runs (10). He is one of just seven batters in the conference to hit 10+ home runs this year.
"Southeastern has a lot of tradition. They expect to win and we will have to play our best baseball to try and win another road series in conference play," said Malone.
The Islanders have won all three of their road conference series this year, taking 2-1 series decisions at UIW, Northwestern State, and New Orleans. They won game two in each one of those three-game weekends.
The Islanders will be going for their first series win over the Lions since they swept Southeastern during the 2021 season.
Stay Social
For more information on Islanders Baseball, follow the team on Twitter (
@IslandersBSB), Instagram (
@IslandersBSB) and like their Facebook page (
Islanders Baseball).
#ShakasUp
