BEAUMONT, Texas — This is the 216th edition of the historic baseball rivalry between McNeese and Lamar University.
The Cardinals travel to Lake Charles, La., for a three-game series this weekend, beginning Friday at 6 p.m.
COWBOYS AT A GLANCE
McNeese enters the game 12-3 overall and 4-2 in Southland Conference play. The Cowboys are 10-1 at home.
On Wednesday, the Cowboys defeated Louisiana-Lafayette, 4-2, for their second straight win.
McNeese began the season 10-1 with its lone loss suffered to Wichita State.
On the road in Houston, the Cowboys dropped a conference series, two games to three to Houston Christian, losing Game 1 (6-2) and Game 2 (15-8).
Junior outfielder Larry Edwards Jr. leads the offense with 18 hits, 13 RBIs and a .367 average in 14 starts.
Edwards Jr. has gone 5 for 13 in his last three games with a double and two RBIs.
Easton Dowell, a redshirt sophomore infielder, leads the team with a .660 slugging percentage while he is batting .340 with 16 hits, six doubles, three home runs and eight RBIs.
The Cowboys are hitting a collective .268 with 126 hits, 13 home runs and 85 RBIs.
McNeese is second in the SLC in pitching with a 3.42 ERA while the staff ranks third in strikeouts with 151.
Senior righthander Sergio Lopez sports the second-best ERA in the conference (0.51) in six appearances. Lopez is 3-0 with 19 strikeouts.
Lopez has allowed the fewest number of walks (1) and runs (1) of any pitcher in the SLC.
Lefthander and senior pitcher Alexis Gravel leads the staff with 31 strikeouts while he has a 2.21 ERA in four starts and a team-high 20.1 innings pitched.
Gravel had 12 strikeouts in a six-inning two-hitter to help McNeese defeat Oakland, 1-0, back on Feb. 21.
Head coach Justin Hill, the winningest coach in the program's history, enters his 12th season as the leader of the program.
Hill has now amassed 345 career victories at McNeese.
HEAD-TO-HEAD
The series began on Feb. 19, 1954.
Seventy-one years later, the Cardinals hold the upper hand, leading the series 120-93-2 while they are 89-52 against McNeese in conference play.
The Cardinals have won four of the last six meetings with the Cowboys. The teams met five times in 2024, which included two games in the conference tournament.
LU is 49-35-2 when it plays at McNeese.
THE CARDS
LU is ranked third in NCAA Division I in hits (209), one behind Oregon in second and two behind the nation's leader, Texas-San Antonio.
The Cardinals are also tied for 20th in the nation in batting average (.327).
Heladio Moreno (.419),
Damian Ruiz (.414) and
Tab Tracy (.406) are ranked second, third and sixth, respectively in batting average in the SLC.
Ruiz is first in runs scored (26), first doubles (10) and 10th in OPS (on base + slugging percentage).
LU has five batters in the top 10 of the SLC in hits. Ruiz is tied for second (29), Moreno and Tracy are tied for fourth (26),
Brayden Evans is seventh (25) and
Reese Beheler is 10th (23).
Evans is riding a six-game hitting streak, going 11 for 25 during that stretch with two doubles, a home run and nine RBIs. He also has tallied eight multi-RBI games.
Moreno leads the Cards in batting average as he has gone 6 for 11 in his last three games.
Tracy has put together a four-game hit streak by going 9 for 14 with two doubles and five RBIs during the stretch.
He went 4 for 4 with two doubles, a triple and four RBIs in the 11-5 win over New Mexico State in Game 1.
Ruiz leads the team with 10 multi-hit games while Moreno and Tracy have nine and Beheler has eight.
Riely Hunsaker and
Chris Olivier rank seventh and eighth in the SLC in ERA at 1.69 and 1.77, respectively.
Olivier is fourth in opponent batting average (.181) while Hunsaker is eighth (.189).
Peyton Havard remains in the top 10 of the conference in batters struck out, ranking seventh with 25.
In Wednesday's extra-inning victory over NM State, the LU staff tallied 16 total strikeouts, most of the season in a single game.
That surpasses the season high mark of 14 strikeouts tallied against Stephen F. Austin on March 9 and the University of Albany on Feb. 21.
