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Live Stats (Sun.)JACKSONVILLE – The Jacksonville State baseball team will usher in the 2016 season this weekend with a three-game series with Valparaiso. The series starts on Friday with a 3 p.m. first pitch.
The Gamecocks and Crusaders will meet on Saturday at 1 p.m. and the final contest of the weekend on Sunday at 1 p.m. All three game will carried on the Gamecock Sports Network with
Mike Parris calling all the action on Friday and Sunday, while Seth Cain will fill in on Saturday. All three games will be available via live stats on JSUGamecockSports.com.
The 2016 season will mark head coach
Jim Case's 15th season at Jax State and he has led the Gamecocks into the OVC Tournament for all 11 years since joining the league in 2004 and has claimed won the league crown in four of those seasons. The Gamecocks finished the 2015 season 30-27 and 15-14 in the OVC.
Jax State returns 18 lettermen including four positional starters and eight total pitchers. Jax State had two players named to the Preseason All-OVC team including 2015 All-OVC first-team selection
Paschal Petrongolo. The senior designated hitter returns after batting .368 with 82 hits, 48 runs and 59 RBI last season. Also named to the Preseason All-OVC team was sophomore right-handed pitcher
Justin Hoyt. Hoyt finished last season with a record of 1-0, a 2.01 ERA and 23 strikeouts in 22.1 innings. Also returning is senior
Gavin Golsan who set the JSU single-season record with 38 stolen bases (in 42 attempts) a year ago; that ranked him seventh nationally with a 0.69/game average.
Sophomore
Clayton Daniel begins his second season at JSU after a stellar freshman campaign in 2015. Daniel earned Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American honors last year. It marked the eighth time over the last 11 years that a JSU player has received the honor and the 10th under Case. Daniel, from Guntersville, Alabama, finished the season hitting .327 and earned a spot on the OVC All-Freshman team.
Daniel played in 55 games as a rookie for Jax State and became a dependable two-out RBI producer. He finished his first season in a Gamecock uniform with 45 RBI with 27 of those runs driven in coming with two outs in an inning. In 2015, he collected 73 hits, which ranked third on the team and turned in 17 extra base hits, including 15 doubles. He ended the 2015 season on a nine-game hitting streak and reached base in each of the final 22 games. Daniel posted 21 multiple hit games and 13 multiple RBI contests. Against OVC competition, Daniel ranked second on the team in batting average with a .347 clip. He drove in 24 runs in league games-only and had nine doubles.
Case has set the opening weekend pitching rotation as senior right hander
Graham Officer will get the nod on opening day. Officer was key in relief for the Gamecocks last year and turned in a team-best 5-1 record on the mound. Sophomore
Jack Pierce will start the Saturday contest, while newcomer
Colton Pate will make his JSU debut on Sunday. The Lincoln, Alabama righty comes to the program after spending one season at Central Alabama Community College.
Valpo finished 2015 with a 22-31 record overall, but a 15-14 mark in the Horizon League. The offense experienced a 53-point uptick in batting average and a 67-point increase in slugging percentage from the season prior. Senior Spencer Mahoney obtained the school record for career walks with 138 while moving into 8th-place all-time for career hits (216). Junior starting pitcher Dalton Lundeen amassed 94 strikeouts in 93 2/3 innings pitched while winning five games for the third straight year. The southpaw enters 2016 needing 78 1/3 innings pitched to become Valpo's career leader in that category.
All JSU students fans 18 and under are admitted free to all JSU baseball games. Season tickets are now available by calling the JSU Athletic Ticket Office at 256-782-8499 or online at JSUGamecockSports.com.
