Eagles draw #21 Lenoir-Rhyne to open SAC Tournament
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Sixth-seeded Carson-Newman (31-17) meets third-seeded #21 Lenoir-Rhyne (35-11) in the opening round of the South Atlantic Conference Tournament on Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. from Ron Christopher Stadium in Wingate, North Carolina.
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JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Sixth-seeded Carson-Newman (31-17) meets third-seeded #21 Lenoir-Rhyne (35-11) in the opening round of the South Atlantic Conference Tournament on Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. from Ron Christopher Stadium in Wingate, North Carolina.
Carson-Newman has won four SAC Championships (1992, 1993, 1997 and 2007) since the tournament began in 1991. Catawba (10) and Wingate (7) are the only schools with more titles. Tusculum has also won four trophies.
C-N will begin tournament play in a pod with three other teams, two-seed Wingate, opening round opponent and third-seeded Lenoir-Rhyne and the seven seed Newberry. Carson-Newman went 3-6 versus those three teams in the regular season and played them all at home. All six losses were by four runs or less. There are only four SAC schools with 30 wins or more and three of them are in this pod, including C-N. There is also two regionally ranked, with Wingate at four and Lenoir-Rhyne at six in the NCAA's latest region rankings.
The Eagles hold a 61-55 record in the league tournament, with this season being the fourth time since 2015 that the postseason is not played in full at Smokies Stadium and the third straight year the championship series will not be played there as well. Carson-Newman has won a SAC Tournament game in five consecutive seasons. The program is 28-27 in SAC Tournament games played in North Carolina. The regular season champion has won the tournament title 15 times in 33 tries while a top four team has won all but two championships.
C-N has its longest winning streak of the season at the perfect time. The Eagles rattled off wins in nine straight games to end the regular season, tied for the fourth-longest active winning streak in DII and tied for the longest active winning streak in the Southeast Region. It's the longest current winning streak by any SAC school as well. The late regular season momentum has helped the Eagles finish with at least another 30-win season, the second straight 30-win year and 16th since 1990. Since 1990, C-N has now produced consecutive 30-win years on six different occasions.
Junior Logan Floyd (Adairsville, Ga.) leads Carson-Newman into the postseason with his .423 batting average, which would be the second-highest batting average in a season in the program's DII era. Floyd has 74 hits, with 31 of them going for extra bases. His 19 doubles are tied for eighth-most in a season. He enters postseason play riding a 13-game hitting streak and 31-game on base streak, both of which are his longest streaks of the season.
Carson-Newman just cannot escape Lenoir-Rhyne in the postseason. Friday's meeting will be the third time in the past four seasons that the two sides play in the SAC Tournament. The Bears have won the three meetings over the last three years, winning 7-3 and 7-4 in 2023 and 12-3 in an elimination game this past season. Prior to this recent stretch of postseason play, the last SAC tournament matchup between the Bears and Eagles was in 2005, C-N's last postseason victory over LR 9-5 on April 21st, 2005. C-N leads the all-time series 69-45, but has lost the past four meetings, three of which came earlier this season.
C-N not only faces the Bears again, but does so with them ranked once more. This will be the eighth straight meeting between the two teams in which LR is a ranked club, first time not being top ten nationally. Furthermore, 15 of the last 18 matchups have featured a ranked LR since 2022. This season, Carson-Newman holds a 2-7 record against ranked foes.
Lenoir-Rhyne enters South Atlantic Conference Tournament play in position to make a second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament. The Bears are 35-11-1 this season and earned the number three seed by finishing conference play 23-9-1. In the NCAA's second region rankings, they listed LR sixth in the Southeast region.
Head coach Adam Skonieczki's team enters the postseason with some momentum as well, having won five of their final six games of the regular season. They won all but two conference series this season, losing to #3 Catawba in late February and to Newberry in early April.
In a good hitting conference, LR is up there has one of the top hitting clubs in the SAC this season. The Bears finished the regular season with a .341 batting average, best in the league and 13th best nationally. Matt Procopio is second in the league hitting .429 and Mackenzie Wainwright is fourth with a .420 batting average. The Bears are second in many other offensive categories such as hits (531), home runs (61), on-base percentage (.438), scoring (8.9) and slugging percentage (.547).
LR's pitching staff has been inconsistent this season. Even with some inconsistencies, they still have the second-best earned run average in the SAC at 4.95. The Bears have allowed double-digit runs three times in the last seven games. Starting pitcher Kellen Gradisar is the team's ace with a 7-3 record in 12 starts. He has a 3.34 ERA over 67 innings and has struck out 44. One of his six complete games came against C-N in Feb.
First pitch on Friday afternoon in Wingate, North Carolina is at 3:00 p.m. All of C-N's games this weekend at the SAC tournament will air with a free audio stream available courtesy of the Eagle Sports Network on cneagles.com/live.
