BEAUMONT – After dropping three of its last four contests, the Lamar University looks to get back on the winning track when it hosts Texas Southern Wednesday at 4 p.m. at Vincent-Beck Stadium. It is the Cardinals' final non-conference game at The Beck for the 2016 campaign.
 
 The Cardinals (26-10) rattled off a 15-game win streak and had it snapped Baylor and added two more losses against McNeese State after Will Hibbs pitched a gem for the lone win of the week Friday night. The final two games of the weekend were each lost by one run.
 
Texas Southern (15-18) enters the game after it was swept at Arkansas-Pine Bluff. The Tigers have lost five of their last seven. They have been a tough test for the Cardinals in the past few years, including last season's 6-2 loss at Vincent-Beck Stadium.
 
TSU has played two Southland Conference schools this season and split. It lost to Stephen F. Austin and defeated Incarnate Word, neither of which Lamar has played yet. The Cardinals played SWAC member Prairie View, which TSU holds a 3-3 split on the season, and downed them 13-3 in early March.
 
While Texas Southern has yet to announce its starter for the game, Lamar has decided to go with freshman lefty Matt White (1-0, 1.59 earned run average), who earned his first career start. The Lumberton native has appeared in four games and has 5.2 innings of work on the year. He's allowed only one run on five hits and had five strikeouts.  
 
TSU hits at a .264 clip as a team and averages seven runs a contest. It is led by Gerreck Jimenez in hitting at .341, followed by Richard Alamo (.333), Blake Hicks (.329), Christopher Scroggins (.327) and Jose Cabreja (.311). Joel Rosariso and Jimenez lead the Tigers with 24 runs batted in and Ryan Lazo has a team-high 26 runs scored.
 
As a pitching staff, TSU allows 8.6 runs a contest and has a 7.50 ERA, which is 284^th in the country.
 
Reid Russell jumped back on top of the team standings for hitting with a .365 average. He leads a team that hits .292 and averages 6.4 runs a game. Stijn van der Meer is hitting .359 on the season, followed by .331 from Bryndan Arredondo and .305 from Jake Nash.  All four are the top four hitters in the Cardinal order.
 
Robin Adames is in earshot jumping the .300-plus group hitting .292 on the year. Nash is the only Cardinal that registers in the thirties in both RBI (36) and runs scored (31). Van der Meer follows him with 29 runs scored and Russell leads him with 38 RBI. If Russell can get to 40 RBI, he'll have the most since three Cards did it in 2013, and Nash has a shot at being the first 40-40 guy since the same season.
 
Lamar averages 4.25 runs allowed a game and has a 3.59 team ERA.
 
Another crucial weekend in league play opens Friday when the Cardinals head to Houston Baptist for a three-game slate that opens at 2 p.m. The second game of the slate is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday and the finale is at 2 o'clock Sunday.
 
Including the series against McNeese State, the last six weekends of the season have the Cardinals pitted against four teams in the top five with the other team being LU.