Softball Wins Series, Sets Up Championship Showdown with Hofstra

Photo courtesy of GeorgiaStateSports.com

The Georgia State softball team lost the finale of their final home series of the season in 13 innings, 4-2. It was the longest game GSU softball has played since 1993. However, the Panthers won 2 out of 3 in the series to improve to 15-2 in conference play and set up the showdown in New York next weekend with Hofstra. Hofstra has a conference record of 16-1. Therefore, if the Panthers win the series in New York next weekend, they will have the same record and own the head to head tie breaker and thus be 2011 CAA regular season champions. This would also give them the right to host the CAA tournament for the first time since 2006. Hofstra has hosted the tournament the other 8 times it has been held.

Indy Star: RJ Hunter Down to Four

In a mildly suprising move, RJ Hunter, son of Head Coach Ron Hunter, has cut his list of schools to four: Virginia Tech, Iowa, Wake Forest and Georgia State.

The fact that we made the cut is a tremendously good sign.

Also mentioned in this blog, Zavier Turner, RJ's point guard at Pike and a 2013, recruit has already picked up an offer from Coach Hunter.

Indianapolis Star Link

Coach Hunter Completes Staff

Not a ton of new information here but glad to see the return of Claude Pardue and Tony Bollier along with Darryl Labarrie and Everick Sullivan.

Georgia State Sports Link

AJC: Mark Bradley: GSU Made Best Hire

Mark Bradley posted a blog update rating the three Georgia Universities (Kennesaw State, Georgia Tech and Georgia State) and their basketball coaching hires. According to Bradley, GSU made the best hire.

"I’d give solid B’s to Tech’s and KSU’s new men, and I’d give something better to Georgia State’s."

AJC Link

AJC: Hunter will not be recruiting son

Good work by our guy Michael Carvell.

AJC Link

CAA Baseball Review 4/25/2011

In an effort to keep everyone informed of the current baseball standings and outlook in the CAA, I'm going to provide a review after each weekend in this final month of play.

Georgia State entered the weekend in 5th place, 2 games back of 1st place UNC-Wilmington, and 1.5 games out of the final tournament spot.

The Panthers took 2-of-3 games this weekend at Northeastern up in Boston. Looking at the standings you would think a sweep would have been nice but we faced some excellent pitching up there so you have to be happy about winning the series.

What happened above us in the standings? UNC-Wilmington won 2-of-3 against Hofstra, Delaware won 2-of-3 against James Madison and Old Dominion won 2-of-3 against George Mason. The Delaware-James Madison series was the first example of teams ahead of us beating each other up and it benefiting us. Thanks to Delaware, we are now .5 game out of the final tournament spot. We still remain 2 games back of the lead held by UNC-Wilmington and a series to play with them. The only change in positions of the top 5 is James Madison dropped from 2nd to 4th with Delaware and Old Dominion each moving up 1 position as a result.

Georgia State currently holds the tiebreaker with James Madison because we won the series against them this season. We lose the tiebreaker with Delaware and Old Dominion because they won the series against us. We have yet to play UNC-Wilmington. I have a feeling head-to-head tiebreakers are going to come into play for tournament seeding this season.

What is that you ask? That's a log jam and also what the CAA looks like right now. There are currently 7 teams within 3 games back of the lead. Even Northeastern who is in 2nd to last place is just 5 games back.

My CAA impact series of the week for this weekend is UNC-Wilmington at James Madison. James Madison needs a series win badly in order to remain in a tournament spot as Georgia State hosts Hofstra and hopefully is able to win 2-of-3. If JMU is able to pull out a win this log jam is going to get even tighter. The last 2 weeks of the season are looking to be very exciting.