Marshall University Athletics
Baseball Makes First Appearance in C-USA Championship
5/23/2006 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 23, 2006
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HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - The Marshall baseball team makes its first trip to the Conference USA Tournament this week, traveling to Reckling Park on the campus of Rice University in Houston. Marshall, the No. 7 seed, faces off with No. 2-seed Houston at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and will see either No. 3-seed Tulane or No. 6 East Carolina Thursday in the second round.
Live video of every game of the tournament will be streamed online for free at www.herdzone.com. Live stats also will be available.
Marshall will be making its first conference tournament appearance since 1995, when it was a member of the Southern Conference. In that tournament, Marshall went 1-2, losing 5-1 to The Citadel in the first round, defeating Davidson, 8-5, and then falling to Western Carolina, 10-3, in an elimination game.
Marshall is 8-16 all-time in conference tournament games, with all coming in the Southern Conference. The Herd's best finish in a conference tourney is second, which it accomplished in 1985 and 1989, losing in the championship game each time to Western Carolina.
After a stellar all-around season, Brendan Murphy (Jr., Chattanooga, Tenn.) has been honored as a Second Team All-Conference USA selection. He is Marshall's first all-conference selection since Jason Brooks was a first-team All-Mid-American Conference pick in 2001. Murphy has a team-high 15 home runs and 70 RBI this year. His RBI mark is the second most for a Marshall player in a single season, behind only Brooks' record of 73 in 2001.
Rich Russell (Sr., Toronto, Ontario) continues to find ways to get on base. The senior catcher has an on-base percentage of .515 - the second-best mark in C-USA history behind only Cincinnati's (and current Boston Red Sox) Kevin Youkilis' mark of .549 in 2001. Russell has reached base safely in 49 of 52 games this season, including 30-consecutive games dating back to April 1.
Houston enters the tournament with a 36-19 record after having last weekend off with its league bye. The Cougars finished second in the regular-season standings with an 18-6 C-USA record.
2006 Conference USA Pitcher of the Year Brad Lincoln leads the Cougars on the mound with an 11-1 record and 1.67 ERA. He has a league-high 141 strikeouts in 113 innings, and also is a good hitter with a .288 batting average, 11 homers and 50 RBI.
Offensively, Isa Garcia paces the Cougars with a .342 batting average, while Matt Weston has a team-high 14 home runs. The Cougars are coached by Rayner Noble, who is 426-302 in 12 years at Houston.
In the Herd's first weekend of C-USA play (March 24-26), it was swept at Houston by scores of 7-0, 4-1 and 15-1. The Herd offense was stymied by the Cougar pitching staff, hitting just .145 and scoring two runs over the weekend.
Marshall did receive two excellent starting pitching performances from Brian Chrisman (So., Pittsburgh, Pa.) and Jeremy Slone (Jr., Paintsville, Ky.). Chrisman allowed just five hits and three runs in the opener, while Slone, after a slow start, rolled down the stretch to fire a complete game while allowing four runs and seven hits. All four runs scored in the first two innings, and he did not allow a runner past second base in the final six frames.
Brit Vincent (Jr., Bowling Green, Ky.) provided one of the offense's few bright spots for the weekend with a solo home run in the Sunday contest.
The winners of the 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. contests Wednesday return to play at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. The losers meet at 10 a.m. Thursday.
