Chippewas Look To Remain Hot Against Western
5/18/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The Central Michigan baseball team is headed to the Mid-American Conference Tournament next week.
Just where the Chippewas will be seeded and who their first-round opponent will be is entirely dependent on what happens this weekend at Theunissen Stadium and elsewhere around the league.
CMU plays host to rival Western Michigan in a three-game set that begins Thursday at 3:05 p.m. Game two is Friday at 3:05 p.m. and the series and regular-season finale is set for Saturday at 2:05 p.m.
Tickets for all games are $2 each and rally towels will be handed to fans as they enter. The 10 Chippewa seniors will be honored prior to the first pitch of Friday's game, and the 24th Annual Chippewa Baseball Alumni Day is slated for Saturday.
The Chippewas are 19-34, while Western is 17-29. They are two of four teams (Eastern Michigan and Toledo are the others) that are tied for fifth in the overall MAC standings at 10-11. The top eight teams make the league tournament.
CMU - along with Western and Eastern and Toledo, for that matter - could end up seeded anywhere from fourth to eighth when the conference tournament begins on Wednesday, May 25. Eastern Michigan plays at Toledo this weekend.
The Chippewas have won three straight games, six of their last seven, and eight of their last 10. The upswing began with a 3-2 victory at Eastern Michigan on Sunday, May 1, a game the Chippewas sorely needed, coach Steve Jaksa said.
"I really feel that the last game against Eastern was a defining game, a game that we felt we really needed to win," Jaksa said.
Since that win at Eastern, the Chippewas have won both of their MAC series and have shown a improvement both on the mound and at the plate.
The Chippewas are hitting .301 as a team during that stretch and have outscored their opponents, 64-42. CMU pitching has an earned run average of 3.14 over its last 10 games.
"We had some games before (this stretch) where we played OK, up and down, but the consistency and that attitude is really good right now and they're starting to get rewarded," Jaksa said. "We don't want to change that coming into this weekend so we certainly shouldn't have to say much about who's coming in and what we want to accomplish. Just keep playing good baseball."
The Broncos have won nine of their last 15 and last weekend took two of three from Ohio at home.
"It is Western Michigan, we are playing at home, it is the final weekend of the regular season and we want to go into the conference tournament a certain way - playing the way we have talked about and take that momentum into the tournament with us and see what can happen," Jaksa said.