May 1, 2025

Casson reels in Freshman and Pitcher of the Year honors, Floyd and Nathan earn All-SAC honors

For the first time ever in the South Atlantic Conference, one individual wins two different individual awards in the same season. Kolton Casson (Benton, Tenn.) was named the conference’s Freshman of the Year and Pitcher of the Year by the league on Thursday afternoon.

ROCK HILL, S.C. – For the first time ever in the South Atlantic Conference, one baseball player wins two different individual awards in the same season. Kolton Casson (Benton, Tenn.) was named the conference's Freshman of the Year and Pitcher of the Year by the league on Thursday afternoon.

Casson becomes the first player in program history to win freshman of the year honors. With that came more high honors, earning the program's second-ever Pitcher of the Year award. He joins Brian Hontz in 2008 as the only two Eagles to earn that achievement.

"It's definitely been a blessing," Casson said. "It just goes to show that this is a special team. Just putting in work at the field and even before here in high school. It just shows that all the work is starting to pay off."

Along with those individual honors, Casson was named to the All-SAC first team, alongside sophomore first baseman Logan Floyd. Cole Nathan (Knoxville, Tenn.) earned his first career honor, being named to the All-SAC second team. This season marks the 10th straight season that C-N sports multiple athletes on any of the three all-conference teams.

Casson becomes the 12th pitcher in program history to be named a First-Team All-SAC player as well and the first starting pitcher since Brayden Coe in 2021.

The rookie has compiled one of the more impressive seasons on the mound the program has seen in quite some time. He leads all DII with 12 wins this season including wins in his first 11 starts this season. He is one off tying the program record for wins in a season. Two of his most notable wins were against top ten teams. On March 8th, Casson fired a seven-inning complete game against #7 Florida Southern, striking out seven hitters and allowing just one run. One month later, he had arguably an even better effort against #8 Lenoir-Rhyne, a top five offense in DII. The rookie struck out 12 Bears in another seven-inning complete game win.

The Benton, Tenn native posted a 2.22 earned run average in the regular season over 81 innings of work. His ERA lowered to 1.70 in ten conference starts and was sub 1.00 in the month of March.

Casson has six complete games as a rookie, tied for the second-most in program history. He went the distance in three straight outings, with two of those performances being 12 and 13 strikeout efforts. Casson had six straight starts in which he allowed one run or less.

Logan Floyd is an all-conference player for the second straight season. After earning third team honors as a freshman at third baseman, Floyd elevated his game a notch to be the top first baseman in the SAC this season. He becomes just the seventh player to be an All-SAC first baseman for C-N and the first since 2012.

"It's huge, it was more of my main goals going into the year," Floyd said. "It feels great to be able to accomplish it. I just want to thank my family and friends and my teammates, I can't do it without them."

Floyd bumped his batting average up .22 this season to .378 and has drove in a team-high 48 runs. His on-base percentage is .40 higher than last year, up to .450 for the year and has reached base safely in 29 straight games. Currently, Floyd has hit safely in 20 straight games, C-N's first player with a hit in 20 straight games since Mills Rogers in 2010. The first baseman has a team-high 20 multi-hit games this season and is tied for the most multi-rbi games with 12.

After just 13 hits as a freshman, Cole Nathan has burst onto the scene as a sophomore to collect his first career All-SAC honor, being named to the second team. Nathan's .355 batting average, 59 hits, and 43 RBI are all second on the team behind Floyd. His four home runs are tied for the team lead as well.

"I wanted to keep it simple this year and that helped me," Nathan said. "Mostly though, probably the guys around me. The team, the bond we have and chemistry we have had throughout the year. It gives me the confidence because good hitting creates more good hitting. I would give it to the guys around me because they push me every day."

The sophomore proved right away he was poised for a breakout year. Nathan recorded four hits and four RBI in C-N's 17-0 season-opening win over King. He would go on to match that hit and RBI total against UVA Wise on April 8th. The second baseman has 18 multi-hit days and is tied with Floyd with 12 multi-RBI games in 2025.

#18 Carson-Newman begins South Atlantic Conference tournament play tomorrow against the six seed Wingate. First pitch on Friday afternoon in Hickory, 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.