ABILENE - This week marks the final opportunity for Abilene Christian baseball fans to catch their team playing at Crutcher Scott Field this season. The Wildcats begin their final homestand of 2012 Tuesday at 3:35 p.m. vs. Texas-Permian Basin, and then play host to Tarleton State for a four-game weekend series starting Friday night.
Next week ACU (22-19) will play its final regular season games at Angelo State, which is currently tied with West Texas A&M for first place in the Lone Star Conference at 13-7. The Wildcats, meanwhile, are 3.0 games behind in fifth-place at 10-10. The Texans are tied for sixth place with Cameron at 9-11.
The UT-PB Falcons come to Abilene having struggled for most of the season as evident by their 11-27 overall record and 7-20 mark vs. the Heartland Conference. The Falcons are hitting only .233 as a team, while their pitchers are allowing close to six earned runs per game.
Wildcat pitchers also have been scuffling as of late, and just last weekend they combined to post a staff ERA over 8.00 as the Cameron Aggies collectively hit .343 against them. The one bright spot, however, was sophomore lefty
Brady Rodriguez, who stymied Cameron over 8.1 innings of work as he allowed just one unearned run while striking out four. He also did not walk or hit a batter.
ACU's game with UT-PB is its first non-conference affair since early March when the Wildcats dropped of two of three at seventh-ranked Delta State. Overall, the Wildcats are 12-9 vs. non-conference opponents, which includes series wins vs. Southern Arkansas and Colorado Christian, and four-game splits with Arkansas Tech and East Central.
Speaking of four-game splits, those have become the standard for ACU baseball since the start of the conference season on March 16 whether its been against a preseason favorite like Incarnate Word or a winless side from Eastern New Mexico.
And this past weekend it was Cameron's turn to go 2-2 vs. the Wildcats during a condensed weekend in Lawton, Okla., in which the teams completed one game Friday night and three on Saturday afternoon before heavy storms rolled into town.
ACU ended up winning a pair of slugfests in games two and four by scores of 17-13 and 13-10, but were one-hit in a 3-0 defeat in game one, and dropped the third game, 7-2. Despite hitting close to or above .300 for much of the season, the Wildcats have now been one-hit twice the previous two weekends.
Junior second baseman
Chuck Duarte, however, has been red hot over the past three weekends, during which he's raised his batting average over 50 points to a season high of .364. Duarte's tear at the plate began with a 4 for 5 performance at Eastern New Mexico, and most recently he went 3 for 5 vs. the Aggies with a season high four RBI and two doubles.
During this stretch, Duarte also has scored 13 of his 36 runs and clubbed three of his four home runs. His first home run this year was a walk-off shot to beat Texas A&M-Kingsville at home on March 23.
Elsewhere in the lineup, a 1 for 14 slump has cooled off Duncan Blades' bat, but at the same time the Wildcats have received consistent production over the last two weeks from
Reed Watson (.292, seven runs),
Kyle Conwell (.296, six RBI),
Emmett Niland (.304), and
Travis Schuetze (.400, six RBI, four runs).
