UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. - The University of Richmond Spiders baseball team will head north for the second-straight weekend to face the Rhode Island Rams in a three-game series. The Atlantic 10 set gets underway on Friday, with the first pitch scheduled for 3 p.m. Live stats for all three games can be found at RichmondSpiders.com.
Scouting the Spiders
The Richmond Spiders come in to the critical three-game
series with the Rams with an overall record of 22-23 on the season. On Tuesday, the Spiders fell to VCU at The
Diamond, 6-4. This past weekend,
Richmond traveled to UMass and was able to win one of the three games.
Leading the way offensively this season for Richmond has been seniors Phil Ruzbarsky and Chris Cowell. Ruzbarsky is hitting a team-best .358 on the year with 35 RBIs, while Cowell leads the A-10 with 16 home runs to go with 14 doubles and 47 RBIs. Fellow senior Bryan Conway is hitting .311 on the season with a team-best 15 doubles.
On the mound, the Spider pitching staff has been led by junior Jacob Mayers and freshman Zak Sterling. Mayers is 6-3 on the season, striking out 82 batters in 83.1 innings pitched. Sterling has had a great rookie campaign, running out to a 5-1 record while limiting opponents to hit just .185 on the season.
Scouting the Rams
The Rhode Island Rams have had a tough stretch of late,
losing five of their last six games, although three of those losses came at No.
1 Florida State two weeks ago. This past
weekend, URI lost two of three at Fordham, pushing their overall record to
27-21.
Rhode Island has had a solid year at the plate in 2012, led by sophomore Jeff Roy who is hitting a team-high .368 with 11 doubles and 27 RBIs. Senior Jeff Cammans leads the team in both doubles (19) and RBIs (49), while classmate Milan Adams has hit three of the Rams' 13 homers this year.
Pitching has also been good for URI, as the staff has posted a team ERA of 4.56. Senior Anthony Pisani is 3-0 with a 1.45 ERA, while junior Sean Furney is 4-1 with 41 strikeouts with a 3.10 ERA. Junior closer Mike Bradstreet has tallied 10 saves on the year with a 2.70 ERA.
The Series
In the all-time series between the Rams and the Spiders,
Rhode Island holds a 12-8-1 record over Richmond. The Spiders have won three of the last five
games, however, and four of the last six games played in Kingston.
Atlantic 10
Tournament Update
Heading in to the weekend series with Rhode Island, the
Spiders sit in eighth place with an Atlantic 10 conference record of 9-9. The Rams are in second place with a record of
12-6. The top six teams earn bids to the
conference championship. Entering the
weekend, the Spiders are just 1.5 games back of sixth-place Fordham, who
Richmond will host next weekend.
