Bearcats Baseball Hits Road to Close Regular Season

UC visits Memphis this weekend, still mathematically alive for its first conference title since… who knows when.

The Cincinnati Bearcats baseball team will touch down in the land of the delta blues tonight to begin their final series of the regular season against the Memphis Tigers.  UC’s 2016 season has been a roller coaster ride.  After starting the season 1-11 in non-league play (having fallen at the hands of several big name college programs), UC put together a nice hot streak, at one point winning 10 of 11 non-league games and winning it’s first four AAC series before splitting with ECU, which included a rain-shortened tie game on getaway day.  That streak saw UC surge to first place in The American at the end of April.

However, UC’s bats have cooled during the stretch run, and UC has dropped its last two series against UCF and Houston, and fallen to fourth place in the AAC at 11-9-1, and 24-27-1 overall.  The Bearcats have continued to pitch well, getting back-to-back-to-back complete games from starting pitchers against Houston, but the offense was only able to put up a grand total of two runs in three games, and UC got it’s only win in a 1-0 shutout.  Despite the strong starting pitching of Andrew Zellner and others, the Bearcats are dead last in the AAC in team batting average (.233), runs scored, and RBI.

Still, if UC can manage to sweep Memphis and get lots of help this weekend (Houston sweeps Tulane, UCF takes 2-of-3 from ECU, and and UConn loses at least once to USF), the Bearcats can be AAC regular season champions.  As unlikely as that scenario may be, Ty Neal’s team will no doubt be looking to build momentum leading into next week’s AAC tournament in Clearwater.

Game times for this weekend’s series at Memphis are 7:30pm ET (6:30 CT) on both Thursday 5/19 and Friday 5/20, with Saturday’s regular season finale slated for 2:00 ET (1:00 CT).