April 29, 2010
The George Mason baseball team will play one of its biggest series of the season this weekend when the Patriots head to Atlanta to take on Georgia State in three games over three days. Mason and the Panthers will play at 6 p.m. on Friday, 1 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday.
The Patriots are currently third in the Colonial Athletic Association with a 10-5 conference record. The Panthers are fourth with a 7-4-1 CAA mark. Georgia State won the CAA tournament last season, beating Mason along the way. The Patriots were the 2009 regular-season champions. That was the only time they met in 2009. Mason has made just one trip to Atlanta to face the Panthers, traveling there in May of 2006 and winning one of three.
This season, Georgia State has the top offense in the nation, with a .380 batting average and 12.0 runs per game. Eight regulars in the GSU lineup are batting better than .380 led by Rob Lind at .431. Mark Micowski is hitting .413 with 13 steals while Brandon Williams is hitting .411 with 60 RBI. Ryan Fleming is hitting .406 with 13 homers. Bradley Logan, the school's all-time hits leader is hitting .396 with 10 homers. Seven times this year Georgia State has scored 20 or more runs and thrice they have reached 30.
Mason is batting .330 on the season, which might be 50 points less than GSU, but still stands as the team's best single-season mark if it holds up. Dan Palumbo and Ryan Soares are each batting .416 on the year. Palumbo has a .504 on-base percentage while Soares entered the week 10th in the nation in RBI per game, before having six against Maryland on Tuesday, and 2nd in the nation in doubles per game. Mark Hill, at .403, also has a .526 on-base percentage that is the second-highest single-season mark in school history.
Because of how potent the two lineups are, the series will clearly come down to the pitching staffs, and whichever proves most effective. The Panthers will start Aidan Francis (3-3, 6.49 ERA) on Friday, Charley Olson (3-4, 4.88 ERA) on Saturday and Ryan Moore (2-1, 11.08 ERA) on Sunday. Moore had been a preseason first-team All-CAA selection by the conference's coaches but to date he is allowing the opposition to hit .366 off of him and he has surrendered 74 hits in 44.2 innings with 19 doubles and eight homers. Mason will send Kevin Crum (5-1, 3.81 ERA), Ryan Brecko (3-0, 5.10 ERA) and Chris O'Grady (3-0, 3.57 ERA) to the mound. Crum was first-team All-CAA last year and was a preseason selection like Moore. Brecko was third-team All-CAA in 2008 and O'Grady is third in the CAA in opposing batting average with a .227 mark.
The Georgia State bullpen has been anchored by Justin Malone, who is 3-1 with four saves in 20 appearances. His ERA of 4.97 gives him the only sub-5.00 ERA among all relievers who have made more than one appearance. Mason's bullpen has two anchors. Anthony Montefusco is 3-1 with four saves and a 0.95 ERA. In 28.1 innings of work he has struck out 24 and walked just two batters. A.J. Johnson is 2-0 with a 2.29 ERA and six saves. He has held the opposition to a .164 batting average.
Only the top four teams in the final CAA regular-season standings make the conference tournament, a departure from recent seasons when the top six teams would make the field.
