Nicholls takes on Southern at home before closing road portion of schedule at UIW

Nicholls enters its final stretch of road games this week with a midweek game against Southern University followed by a three-game Southland Conference weekend series at Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

The Colonels are getting a surprise reprieve in their road stretch with Tuesday’s game against the Jaguars. The game was originally scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in Baton Rouge, but has been moved to Thibodaux because Southern’s field in unplayable.

With no conference series last weekend, the last time the Colonels played a game was last Wednesday in a 10-7 loss at Louisiana Tech.

“I think it’s good that we get to play. I thought the time off was good for us to get as healthy as we can be before this last run through the last three weekends and into the postseason. It’s good just to play on Tuesday before we hit the road for San Antonio and Houston. I guess time will tell as far as that goes,” Nicholls coach Mike Silva said.

Southern is 18-22 on the season and has had an up-and-down season. At one point in the year, the Jaguars lost seven of eight games before winning the next nine out of 10.

“I think it’s similar to us. We seem to get our losses and wins and bunches. It’s just one of those years. It seems like there’s a lot of that going on across college baseball,” said Silva.

The Jaguars go into the game having dropped two of three games at Prairie View in Southwestern Athletic Conference play.

Southern won the opening game 13-1 but dropped the following two 8-2 and 9-7.

Nicholls and Southern have met three previous times this season. The Colonels beat the Jags 12-0 on March 1 and 10-0 on March 2 in Thibodaux. Nicholls beat Southern 9-5 on March 3 in Baton Rouge.

“I think they’re playing really good right now,” Silva said. “They’re at the top of their league and they’re playing their best baseball. I think it’s a challenging game on the road. They gave us all we wanted at their place last time.

“They beat LSU since then. They’re playing with a lot of confidence and think it will be a challenging game, for sure.”

Incarnate Word goes into the week 23-17 overall, including 8-7 in the Southand Conference. Heading into the Southern game, the Colonels sport a record of 27-16, including 10-5 in the SLC. The Cardinals played at Prairie View on Tuesday going into the three-game series at home against Nicholls.

The opener of the three-game series between UIW and Nicholls is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday. The second game on Saturday also is scheduled for 2 p.m. The finale is slated for 1 p.m. Sunday.

UIW is coming off a Southland series in which it was swept at Lamar. Incarnate Word lost 11-3, 3-2, and 8-2. In the 3-2 loss, the game was tied 3-3 until Lamar came up with the winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning.

“I think they’re good,” Silva said. “They had a tough week at Lamar, but I think the conditions weren’t favorable for them. They’re more built to hit the ball in the air and drive the ball out of the yard. The wind was blowing at 30 miles per hour all weekend at Lamar and they still played two really close games. One got away from them on Sunday, which unfortunately, happens sometimes

“It can be a real challenging weekend for us, again on the road. For whatever reason, we seem to play well on the road. We’re looking forward to it, but also, I think they’re really good. I think it’s our most challenging conference road series to this point.”

The Cardinals are hitting .300 as a team.

 Dalton Beck leads the team in batting with a .395 average, in home runs with 12 and a team-high 50 runs batted in.

Ryan Scott is second on the team in hitting with a .348 average. He has six home runs and 28 runs batted in.

Cameron Caley and J.D. Gregson are tied for second on the team in runs batted in, each with 35, and in home runs with eight apiece. Caley is batting .342 and Gregson .302.

Josh Salinas got the start and had a no-decision in UIW’s 11-3 loss in its opener against Lamar. He allowed three runs on seven hits and one walk, while striking out six in five innings.

For the season, Salinas is 4-1 with a 4.50 earned run average. He has allowed 35 earned runs on 41 hits and 18 walks, while striking out 25 in 50 innings for a team that sports a 6.05 ERA.

Like Salina, Isiah Zavala started the second game of the Lamar series and came away with a no-decision.

Zavala allowed one run on seven hits and three walks, while striking out three in seven innings.

He is 4-3 on the season with a 5.95 ERA. Zavala has allowed 41 runs on 69 hits and 22 walks, with 61 strikeouts in 62 innings.

Hunter Hargett lasted only 2 2/3 innings in taking the loss in the finale of the Lamar series. He allowed four runs on four hits and two walks, with four strikeouts.

Hargett is 2-1 on the season with a 5.47 ERA. He has allowed 16 runs on 26 hits and 17 walks, with 27 strikeouts in 26 1/3 innings.

“Their starting pitching has been good,” Silva said. “Their bullpen’s been another story, but I think that’s really across the league. Minus Lamar, everyone’s bullpens have kind of been hit or miss, so I don’t really think that you can really look at the numbers so much as just the particular day.”

Ever since Nicholls dropped all three games of a home series against the University of New Orleans to open Southland play, the Colonels have been playing in catch-up mode.

Nicholls has now worked its way back to being in second place in the SLC standings behind Lamar.

“After we had a tough weekend in conference, we talked about how much of a grind it was going to be,” said Silva. “We have to go beat some people on our road and we’ve done that. We put ourselves in a position with three weekends go to, we’re right in the middle of this thing in the hunt. We control our own destiny and we gotta play well to make sure we continue to do that each weekend.”

The catch-up mode, Silva said, also put the team in early playoff mode.

“Like last year, we’re basically playing postseason games the whole last month of the season,” the Nicholls coach said. “I think that type of intensity, energy, whatever you can say, it’s positive. If you think about last year, we won the league on the second-to-last day of the season. We were under the gun for about the last month in contention. It’s been like that this year having to play catch up after getting off to a poor start.

“Hopefully, that type of momentum is going to be very similar to the type of atmosphere that postseason games are going to entail in the conference.”