The Alabama State baseball team opens the 2014 season at home this weekend with a three-game series against Eastern Kentucky.
The Hornets will host the Colonels Friday and Saturday night at 6 p.m., and Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Wheeler-Watkins Baseball Complex.
Alabama State is coming off its most successful season, with the most overall wins (32) and conference wins (18) in  the history of the program. The Hornets advanced to the Southwestern Athletic Tournament semifinals for the first time, coming up just short of the championship game.
"It's the start of hopefully something very special," third-year head coach
Mervyl Melendez said "I'm not so much caught up into the first day of the season as much as I'm caught up into getting the season started. I know the season will bring a lot of ups and downs. Experience tells me there will be some great games, and there will be some bad games. The core and nucleus of this team has been together for three years, and they have endured a lot. Although we had a good season last year in winning 32 games, we didn't finish the way we wanted to. We're trying to build everything around the fact that we have to be good when it actually counts. We have to concentrate on the long season."
With 25 returning players from last year's team, Melendez focused on more situational baseball in the three weeks leading up to Friday's season opener.
"Basically, because all the teaching has been done over the first two years of their careers, we can now concentrate on game situations," Melendez said. "There's not a script to how you are going to react in baseball or in any sport. But, what kind of adjustments do you need to make if it doesn't go a certain way? We've been able to concentrate on all those little things more than we have in the past two years, because now the skill work is there. We still work to polish those skills individually, but not as much time teaching from the ground up."
The Colonels (23-34) of the Ohio Valley Conference road the momentum of a first-round upset all the way to the championship round of the OVC Tournament one year ago. Eastern Kentucky returns 19 lettermen and six position starters from last season.
"We know they have a good offensive club," Melendez said. "We believe they had a lot of power last year (42 home runs); they are built around their offense. They also have good pitchers, upper 80s-low 90s type of guys that can throw several pitches for strikes, so we know it's going to be a good test for us. That's what we want. We want to be tested early. We want to see how our team is going to react to adversity. I know our team physically and mentally is ready, but we haven't faced anyone else. This is a good test. I want to see how we react when facing a different opponent."
