JACKSONVILLE – After dropping its first ASUN Conference series last weekend, the Jacksonville State baseball team will travel to Florida's version of Jacksonville for a series with North Florida.
With Eastern Sunday approaching, the series is bumped up a day to Thursday. The Gamecocks and Ospreys will get started at 5:05 p.m. CST on Thursday with another evening match up on Friday (5:05 p.m. CST). The series will wrap up on Saturday with a 12:05 p.m. CST first pitch. All three games will be streamed on UNF's SWOOPLife Live and carried on the Gamecock Sports Network.
Jax State and UNF will be meet for the first time in 10 years and and the first as members of the ASUN Conference. Jax State and UNF previously met in 2012 and 2013. The Ospreys visited Rudy Abbott Field for a three-game series in 2012 before the Gamecocks returned the trip in 2013 with a pair of games. JSU also played Charleston Southern during the trip to the UNF campus. The Ospreys hold a 3-2 lead over the Gamecocks.
It could be an offensive weekend at UNF's Harmon Stadium as both clubs rank in the top-four of the league in batting average and total hits. The Gamecocks rank second in the ASUN in average with a team mark of .301 entering the weekend. In the first three weeks of the conference slate, JSU leads the league with a .366 clip at the plate. The Ospreys enter the weekend with a team batting average of .293.
The Ospreys' offense will be challenged by a Gamecocks' pitching staff that has a conference-best 3.04 earned run average in nine ASUN games. All three Gamecock starters rank in the top-seven among ASUN pitchers in league games only. Sophomore
AJ Causey enters Thursday's outing with a 1.86 ERA against league foes with a league-best 27 strikeouts. Sophomore
Tanner Jones, who will start Friday's contest, has a 2.25 ERA in his three ASUN starts this season. Freshman
Eli Zielinski has the same mark on the mound as Jones in the Sunday slot. He has a league0-best five wins on the season.
Junior
Javon Hernandez starts the weekend second in the ASUN in batting average with a .395 average and the best mark at the plate in nine league games at .595. The Gamecocks' second baseman leads the club with 45 hits and has collected 21 walks in 28-games played this season.
The outfield tandem of senior
T.J. Reeves and junior
Mason Maners have been anchors of the offense for Jax State through 28 games. Reeves leads the team RBI with 33, while Maners has 23 RBI on the season. Reeves has reached base in all 28 games this season, while Maners had a 38-game on-base streak halted last weekend against Kennesaw State. Maners started a new streak on Sunday with reaching base three times in the Sunday setback to the Owls.
