It's a beautiful weekend to open up the new USF Baseball Stadium as the Bulls welcome in the 4-1 Elon Phoenix. Elon took 2 out of 3 games against NC State in their opening series, and defeated High Point in a midweek clash 13-10. Although most of us haven't heard much about Elon other than Mike Ford's 3 TD debut in 2007, this is a quality baseball program who has gone to the NCAA Regionals each of the last 4 seasons.
USF had a hard time in Gainesville last weekend, getting swept by the number one team in the country. Saturday was the best opportunity to win a game, but the Bulls left 10 men on base, which you can't do against a team like Florida.
Let's see this weekend's pitching probables:
| Elon | USF | ||
| Friday | Jared Kernodle (0-1 18.00 ERA) | vs. | Randy Fontanez (0-1 11.57 ERA) |
| Saturday | Kyle Webb (1-0 3.00 ERA) | vs. | Andrew Barbosa (0-1 1.50 ERA) |
| Sunday | Ken Ferrer (1.0 1.59 ERA) | vs. | Nick Gonzalez (0-1 3.00 ERA) |
Here's the default lineup Elon will most likely use:
| Pos. | Name | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| LF | Jake Luce | .563 | .500 | 1.063 |
| RF | Niko Fraser | .333 | .433 | .766 |
| C | Alex Swim | .444 | .471 | .915 |
| SS | Neal Pritchard | .357 | .111 | .468 |
| DH | Ryan Kinsella | .278 | .471 | .749 |
| 1B | Grant McCoury | .500 | .455 | .955 |
| 2B | Cyle Rasmus | .353 | .533 | .866 |
| 3B | Seth Canipe | .333 | .500 | .833 |
| CF | Harry Austin | .625 | .545 | 1.170 |
It's a very small sample size, but from the looks of it this is a team that'll take pitches, get on base any way possible, and move players around the bases. I wouldn't be surprised if Austin gets moved up the lineup after his monster start to the season.
This is going to be a tough series, but I think that we win 2 out of 3 this weekend. The guys will be amped to be playing at the New Red, and I'm sure there will be some huge crowed since admission is free all weekend. We hope to see you guys out there, and take pictures if you do! We'd love for you to post it as a FanPost, or put them up on our Facebook page. (While you're at it, Like V5! We're almost at 100 fans of the site.) We wouldn't be offended if you wanted to write a FanPost and publish it. If it's good enough, we'll put it on the front page for all to see.