May 10, 2007

UAB at Marshall Game Notes
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The Marshall University baseball team will play its final home Conference USA series of 2007 when it welcomes the UAB Blazers to Appalachian Power Park for a three-game set beginning Friday at 7 p.m. ET. Game two will be played at 12 noon ET on Saturday followed by Senior Day on Sunday at 10:30 a.m. ET.

With six conference contests remaining, Marshall (19-26, 4-13) is vying for an invitation to the 2007 C-USA Championship, extended to the top eight out of nine teams in the league. The Thundering Herd, currently in ninth place, is a half-game behind UCF (24-26, 5-13) and two and a half games behind the Blazers (20-30, 7-11) - MU's final two opponents of the regular season.

Marshall claimed the seventh seed in the 2006 tournament in its first season in the conference.

The Herd's C-USA series winning streak ended at two when it suffered a sweep at the hands of Southern Miss last weekend. Freshman infielder Blake Sanders (Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.) extended his current team-high hitting streak to nine games by hitting .429 in the series with a double and two runs scored.

Left fielder Jeff Rowley (Buffalo, N.Y.) saw his 16-game hitting streak end in Sunday's series finale at USM after consecutive 2-for-4 performances in the first two games. Rowley, 10th in C-USA in hitting with a .336 average, is in his first season at Marshall after a two-year stint at Erie Community College.

Pitcher Andrew Blain (Huntington, W.Va.), a reliever for much of the season, has made his way in to the Herd's weekend starting rotation. The southpaw will make his third career start on Friday night against UAB's Mitch Kloskowski.

UAB enters the series losers of two straight and eight of its last 10 games. Outfielder J.R. Bond leads the Blazers with a .355 batting average along with three home runs and 37 RBI. Infielder Ryan Lovdahl owns team-highs in RBI (39) and home runs (5).

The Blazers are under the direction of first-year head coach Brian Shoop, who left Birmingham-Southern after 17 years to take the reins of the UAB program.

Marshall will be without the services of head coach Jeff Waggoner and shortstop Brandon Casamassima (Colleyville, Texas) for the first two games of the series. Both were ejected from Saturday's game in Hattiesburg, Miss., and will continue to serve their mandatory three-game suspension through the first two games of the UAB series.

The Herd leads the all-time series with UAB, 4-3. In its first series as conference foes, Marshall swept UAB 3-0 last season in Birmingham, Ala., outscoring the Blazers 41-13.

All three games of the series can be heard live on the radio locally (WRVC 930-AM and WMUL 88.1-FM) as well as on the internet (www.marshall.edu/wmul). GameTracker will be available on HerdZone.com.

SCHEDULE NOTE: Marshall will play its final home games of the season as part of a doubleheader with Miami (Ohio) on Monday, May 14, at 1 p.m. ET at University Heights. The game was moved from its originally scheduled date of Tuesday, May 15.