CHARLESTON, W. VA. – The Golden Eagles baseball team will be heading into their second series of the early 2020 season. Charleston will be back at the Welch Athletic Complex as they will take on the Eagles from Ashland University.
 
A Look at the Opponent 
The Golden Eagles will have their work cut out for them this weekend as they will face a very tough Ashland team. The Ashland University Eagles finished with an overall record of 48-15 in 2019. They would end their season playing in the Division II College World Series where they would go 1-2 being eliminated by Central Missouri. 
 
Before the start of the 2020 season, Ashland was picked by the NCAA as the No. 7 ranked team in the nation for DII schools. Ashland will be returning eight out of their nine starters in the field from last year. Players such as junior shortstop Austin Eifrid, senior DH/first baseman Carson Mittermaier and senior outfielder Michael Rogers.  
 
Eifrid enters his third year with Ashland as he put up great numbers in his sophomore season. He batted .356, .498 OBP, 9 2B, 2 3B, 2 HR, 39 RBI and struck out only 23 times in 219 at-bats. 
 
Mittermaier enters his final season with Ashland having batted .330, .412 OBP, .560 slg%, 13 2B, 1 3B, 11 HR and 48 RBI a season ago. 
 
Rogers enters his senior campaign as well. In his junior season, he batted .298, .357 OBP, 13 2B, 1 3B, 11 HR and had 41 RBI. 
 
Ashland is led by head coach John Schaly who enters his 23rd season as Ashland's skipper. He has taken his team to the DII College World Series five times in his career with the Eagles. 
 
This will be the first games of the 2020 season for Ashland as they have not played anyone to this point. 
 
CHARLESTON'S OUTLOOK
The Golden Eagles are coming off of their first week of the 2020 season where they took two wins and two losses. Their first win coming from the mid-week game played last Tuesday against Alderson Broaddus winning that one comfortably by a score of 20-5.
 
UC then took a trip out to Wingate University in North Carolina to take on the Bulldogs. Charleston came home with one win and two losses to Wingate. That was the first time in program history that UC was able to earn a win against a solid Wingate program. 
 
There were many positives to take from the opening week. UC saw one of their players earn the Mountain East Conference Player of the Week honor. Junior Jordan Bailey was the one to receive the nod as he went 5-13 netting him a .385 average on the week, he blasted two home runs, one coming in the 2-1 win over Wingate, he had a .529 OBP, four RBI, four runs scored, three walks and one hit by pitch. 

"Jordan was really steady for us at the top of the lineup, he gave us some good at-bats and took advantage of a couple of mistakes that the pitchers made, which was rare because the Wingate staff was really good, but he took advantage of them," said head coach Robbie Britt. "The thing that Jordan did this weekend better than anyone else in the lineup was just put the ball in play. He gave himself a chance, whether it was beat out a ground ball, lead off with a double, obviously the home run, we love seeing that, but he did a great job of putting the ball in play," said Britt. 
 
Charleston will also look for continued production from senior catcher Nick Wilson as he is 7-13 with a .538 avg., .769 slg%, one home run and three RBI to this point in the season. 
 
Charleston also had some solid pitching performances this past week, they will look for more of the same from senior Austin Henrich, junior Logan Campbell and junior Seth Nightingale. 
 
Henrich pitched 6.2 innings, giving up five hits, three earned runs, one walk and had seven strikeouts in his first appearance of 2020. A strong showing, but Charleston would come out with the loss as they fell to Wingate last Friday night by a score of 0-6. 
 
Campbell was able to help his team to a victory contributing five innings pitched, one earned run, one hit and four strikeouts. He helped his team to a 2-1 victory over the Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon's ballgame. 
 
Nightingale opened his 2020 campaign with 4.1 innings pitched, gave up three hits, two earned runs, no walks and tallied four strikeouts. His solid performance would result in a Golden Eagle loss as they fell in the final game of the series to Wingate 1-6. 
 
Charleston looks to continue to pitch the ball well and play solid defense but will need to get the offense rolling a bit more as they left multiple runs on base in this week's series. 
 
COACH BRITT'S INPUT
Head coach Robbie Britt has a lot of respect for Ashland and their head coach John Schaly. "Coach Schaly does an amazing job with his group. They are typically older and mature, so you know they are going to be well-coached," said Britt, "I think he's got so much experience, obviously with them being in the World Series last year and having a lot of success that they are going to be a good team, and they are going to challenge us  in all three areas of the game." 
 
Moving forward into the weekend, how the starters on the mound perform will have a large impact on the outcome of the series. Coach Britt was impressed with what he saw from his guys this past weekend and hopes to continue to improve against Ashland.
 
"I thought all three of our starters gave us a chance to win. I think they went deeper than what we expected them to go especially with it being the first series of the year," said Britt, "But the starters and even the guys that came in, Jacob Kaiser with a four-inning save on Saturday, you look at Robert Fultineer who had two appearances on the weekend, those guys are experienced and we have to continue to have great pitching performances from those guys. But for week one, I thought we did a tremendous job." 
 
Heading into the weekend, Britt believes the team needs to focus on the basics, trying to keep things as simple as possible. "We have got to throw strikes, we have to make routine plays defensively and execute at the plate," said Britt. "I think we did a very good job of that overall for the weekend, but we just did not do enough of it on Friday and Sunday. You look at Friday night, again you leave 13 guys on base. We did a great job of running up one of the best arms we will see all year in Hunter Dula from Wingate. We did a great job of running his pitch count up early and battling. The problem was we would get bases loaded and we wouldn't be able to execute. We need to get better at executing at the plate. We had way too many strikeouts this past weekend, and that will be a focus of ours for the remainder of the week." Said Britt. 
 
Game Coverage
UC will take on Ashland starting with a doubleheader on Saturday, Feb. 22 with the first game starting at 1:00 p.m. and the second game to follow that around 4:00 p.m. Charleston will wrap up the weekend on Sunday, Feb. 23 with a game at 12:00 p.m. Live Broadcast and live stats can be found here at the following links:
 
Live Broadcast: https://mountaineast.tv/charleston/
Live Stats: https://ucgoldeneagles.com/sidearmstats/baseball/summary