FORT WORTH, Texas - The Alabama State baseball team will begin its quest for the SWAC Championship Wednesday against defending champion Prairie View at Noon at LaGrave Field.
 
The Hornets (30-23 overall, 18-6 SWAC) are the No. 2 Eastern Division seed in the second game of the tournament against the Panthers (23-25, 12-12), the No. 3 Western Division seed as the teams meet in the opening round for the second straight season. All Alabama State tournament games will be broadcast online free of charge at bamastatesports.com/showcase.
 
In revised times on SWAC Tournament bracket, which again is a five-day, eight-team, double-elimination format in pool play but a winner-take-all championship game, the Hornets are paired with No. 1 West Seed Southern (20-21, 14-10) and No. 4 East seed Alabama A&M (8-39, 6-16), which face each other Wednesday at 6 p.m.
 
On the other side of the bracket, No. 2 West seed Arkansas-Pine Bluff (21-30, 13-11) will face No. 3 East seed Alcorn State (15-39, 14-10) in the opening game at 9 a.m., and No. 1 East Seed Jackson State (30-20, 19-5) will face No. 4 West seed Texas Southern (20-27, 12-12) at 3 p.m. Four games are scheduled daily Wednesday-Friday, with Saturday games if necessary to determine the teams in Sunday's 2 p.m. championship game, which will be shown online free of charge at ESPN.com, and shown tape-delayed on ESPNU at a date and time TBA.
 
The Hornets last played on May 4-5, completing a three-game sweep of division foe Mississippi Valley State. Head coach Mervyl Melendez and his staff have focused on making sure Alabama State practiced at the speed of the game, which can be hard to duplicate in practice.
 
“We want to make sure we don't forget how this game is played, and at what level of intensity tournament play is,” said Melendez said. “Our approach was to go 100 percent in every drill we did, and then followed that up with scrimmages to help the guys to stay sharp and have live at-bats and the pitchers to get work on the mound.”

Not only is Alabama State and Prairie View meeting in the SWAC Tournament for the third straight year, but it's the second matchup in 2013. The Hornets defeated Prairie View 9-2 on February 22 on the first day of the Major League Baseball Urban Invitational in Houston, Texas.  The Panthers are coming off a pair of losses last Saturday at Arkansas-Pine Bluff which dropped Prairie View to the third seed in the ultra-competitive SWAC Western Division, in which two losses separated the top four teams in the standings.

“We know Coach Waskyla Cullivan does a great job coaching his team,” Melendez said of the Panthers, who won the tournament last year as the No. 2 West seed. “They have some guys who are back from last year's championship team, so we know they have guys that are tested. We played each other at the beginning of the season (in the sixth game of the year for both teams), and right now they are probably a different team. We have to play our game, and concentrate on what we do, but we know they are going to be ready to play as well.”

-GO HORNETS-