The Alabama State baseball team will open the month of April at Troy Tuesday night before hosting Georgia State Wednesday at the Wheeler-Watkins Baseball Complex.
Tuesday's game at Troy is at 6 p.m. and can be heard free of charge on
bamastatesports.com/showcase or watched online for $5.95 via
troytrojans.com/showcase. Wednesday's game against Georgia State is at 4:30 p.m.
The Hornets (18-12 overall, 9-3 SWAC) are coming off an impressive three-game weekend sweep of conference foe Mississippi Valley State at home. Alabama State scored 10+ runs and had 10+ hits in two of the three games in winning the series by a combined score of 29-5.
“We put a lot of emphasis on going back to taking good at-bats,” head coach
Mervyl Melendez said. “We were concentrating too much on execution and the outcome of every at-bat. We wanted the guys to have a good approach at the plate, and have good at-bats. I thought they were better, and very aggressive. We made every at-bat tough for the opponent, and that's what we needed to do better, and we did.”
Alabama State is at the halfway mark of the season with 30 games played and 24 regular season games remaining prior to the SWAC Tournament May 15-19 in Ft. Worth, Texas. The Hornets are tied for first in league play with 12 SWAC games to go, but Melendez knows there's still a long way to go.
“I think it's still early enough that we continue to work hard and take each game one at a time,” Melendez said. “I think we need to build on the progress we made this weekend. We can't just sit back and say 'hey we had a good weekend, we've figured everything out and we're going to be ok.' We need to take it one step at a time, and understand throughout the season other things will surface that we'll need to do better.”
In mid-week games, the Hornets face a pair of teams for the second time this season. Alabama State beat Troy (19-7) in Montgomery by a 4-3 score back in Montgomery on February 26. Wednesday's game will be the second in eight days with Georgia State (16-13), which beat the Hornets 14-1 last week in Atlanta.
“Troy comes off a good weekend (a conference sweep of Sun Belt foe Middle Tennessee State),” Melendez said. “Georgia State, just the opposite (coming off being swept at Delaware in Colonial Athletic Association play). They beat us at their place, and swung the bats extremely well (with 19 hits). They didn't have a good weekend, so they're trying to get back on track. Knowing we beat Troy here, they will be eager to play better and get a different outcome, which makes it a challenge for us, but our guys are going to be ready as we look to build on what we did this past weekend.”
