Baseball Preview: Week 13
5/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 13, 2009
HOUSTON - The University of Houston baseball team will close out the regular season on May 14-16 in a three-game series against UCF at Jay Bergman Field in Orlando.
Houston takes a 24-27 overall record into the series and a 12-9 mark in Conference USA play. UH currently sits in third place in the league standings entering the final weekend of play and with the Conference USA Championship scheduled to be held on May 20-25 in Hattiesburg, Miss.
Thursday and Friday's contests are scheduled for a 5:30 p.m. start with the finale scheduled for Saturday at 12:15 p.m.
In the all-time series against the Knights, Houston holds a 15-4 record, including a sweep at Cougar Field last season and nine wins in their last 10 contests. The Cougars also swept the series in 2007 in Orlando.
The Knights are led at the plate by Shane Brown, who holds a .366 batting average with 20 doubles and six home runs. Kyle Sweat paces all pitchers with a 4.67 ERA in 61.2 innings of work.
Last week, UCF went 1-2 in a series against Rice in Houston and defeated Stetson 5-4 in a mid-week contest on Tuesday. The Knights shutout the Owls 5-0 in the Friday opener but lost the remaining two games of the series. Currently UCF sits at 20-32 on the season and 7-14 in league play.
As for the Cougars, they went 1-2 last weekend at Cougar Field against ECU in a battle for second place in the league standings. Like UCF, Houston won Friday's opener 5-4 over the Pirates with Chase Dempsay earning the win but they were unable to win the series, dropping the final two games of the series.
Blake Kelso leads all Cougar batters with a .353 with 14 doubles, three triples and two doubles. On the mound, Jared Ray has a team-low 4.58 ERA among the starters after winning the last three of his four Friday starts.
Fans can hear all games live on UHCougars.com with second-year announcer Jeremy Branham calling the play-by-play action and former UH letterwinner Pat Cauley providing the analysis.
Live stats through game tracker will also be available for all games this week.
Following the Cougars series against UCF, Houston will travel to the Conference USA Championships in Hattiesburg, Miss., on May 20-25. Seeding for the tournament is scheduled to the release on Saturday evening.
