The Panthers quest for a 2011 Baseball Championship begins at 3 PM on Brooks Field at UNC Wilmington. The Panthers enter as the 4th (and final) seed to the tournament and will face #1 seed James Madison. The Panthers finished the CAA with a 17-13 record while the Dukes finished at 21-9, 2 of those loses coming at the hands (or paws) of the Panthers in Virginia.
Offensive Comparison: The Dukes and Panthers finished 1st and 2nd in the CAA offensively. JMU has a team batting average of .319 and scored 9.2 runs per game on the season. The Panthers follow with a .305 batting average and 7 runs per game on the season. While the teams tied in doubles, the Dukes have 27 triples to the Panthers 11 and 142 for 180 in stolen bases compared to the Panthers 11 triples and 93 for 121 stolen bases. This shows the base path aggressiveness and team speed advantage that James Madison holds. While the Dukes have a more powerful lineup, the Panthers have a more well balanced lineup with most starter batting averages near or above .300. The Dukes have a greater disparity in the top half and bottom half of the lineup. The top half is above .335 and the bottom half is below .287.
Pitching Comparison: The Panthers lead the CAA in pitching this year with a team ERA of 4.23 and runs allowed per game of 4.8. The Dukes are 2nd worse in the CAA with a team ERA of 5.98 and 6.6 runs allowed per game. One of the Panthers strengths has been the Dukes weakness, the long ball. The Panthers allowed just 25 home runs on the year, just 12 of them from their weekend rotation. The Dukes allowed 62 with 28 coming from their weekend rotation. Since this is a one-game series, the Dukes are lucky in the fact that they have one solid starter in D.J. Brown. Brown went 8-1 on the regular season with a 4.37 ERA. He's a strikeout pitcher accumulating 82 K's (to just 28 walks) through 82.1 innings pitched. He has a WHIP of 1.33 and a .257 batting average against. The Panthers will send Will Campbell to the mound to face the Dukes. Will is 9-2 with a 2.74 ERA. He has limited opposing batters to a .231 batting average and has a WHIP of just 1.03.
This will be a game 1 rematch of the regular season series where the Dukes scored 5 runs off Aidan Francis in the 8th inning to overcome the 6-4 Panther lead and win 9-6. Will Campbell pitched 6 innings and allowed the powerful JMU lineup only 3 runs (2 earned) on 7 hits and a walk. The Panthers scored 6 runs on D.J. Brown in 6.1 innings. Mark Micowski, Brandon Williams, Drew Shields and Carter Sackett all had multi-hit games for the Panthers. The damage from the Dukes came courtesy of shortstop David Herbek who went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI's and scored twice.
I think the Panthers win this game 1 matchup. They should have completed a 3-game sweep on the Dukes during their regular season meeting but a botched relief inning prevented that from happening. The Dukes don't have the arms to keep the Panthers offense from hitting. The Panthers are the only ones who can beat the Panthers in this game, and for that matter I believe that statement is true for the entire tournament. GO PANTHERS!!!
UPDATE, 2:56 PM: The Dukes will hold D.J. Brown for a later game and send Sean Tierney to the mound. Sean is 9-1 with a 3.27 ERA on the season. He's started just 6 games and had 10 relief appearances. Sean pitched 52.1 innings on the season and has a WHIP of 1.36. Sean pitched in game 1 of the regular season series against the Panthers. He went 2.2 innings in relief of D.J. Brown and allowed no runs and just 1 hit. He walked 2 and had 2 strikeouts.
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