The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
UAB Travels To Play UCF This Weekend
5/9/2008 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 9, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. - With two league weekends remaining in its 2008 season, the UAB baseball team will look to play its way into the Conference USA Championship this weekend at UCF. The Blazers have won five straight games against the Knights entering the weekend after sweeping UCF at Young Memorial Field last season. UCF is currently in seventh place in the C-USA standings, while UAB is in ninth, a half game behind Memphis for eighth.
The two teams kickoff the series Friday night at 5:30 p.m. CT before playing game two on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. CT and the finale at 12:00 p.m. CT on Sunday.
UAB enters the weekend with a record of 20-29 (4-14 C-USA), while UCF comes in with a record of 29-21 (6-15). The Knights started the season 20-2 but have since went 9-19,
The Blazers have a change in their weekend rotation as Kyle Roberson (4-6, 5.10) will make his first Friday start of the season against the Knights. Beau Pender (0-1, 6.19) returns to the weekend rotation and will start on Saturday, while Mitch Kloskowski (5-5, 5.89) will get the nod on Sunday.
The Knights will counter with their weekend rotation of Kyle Sweat (5-3, 4.06) on Friday, Mitch Herold (3-3, 3.36) on Saturday and Mitch Houck (4-2, 6.26) on Sunday.
First baseman Ryan Keedy leads the Blazers offensively and leads Conference USA in batting average (.409), on base percentage (.515), doubles (22) and hits (76).
Third baseman Luke Stewart has played exceptionally well the past couple weeks, hitting seven home runs in the team's last 10 games. Stewart now has 12 home runs on the year to rank him fourth in the league.
UCF is led by Shane Brown who is batting .355 with four homers and 40 RBI, while Dwayne Bailey is batting .347 and is 20-of-21 on stolen base attempts. Knight standout Kiko Vazquez missed much of the season due to injury but has returned to the lineup and is batting .308 with three homers and nine RBI in 10 games played.
All three games this weekend can be followed live on Gametracker at UABsports.com.
