Florida Memorial University’s baseball team will play its home and conference opener this weekend when it hosts University of South Carolina-Beaufort for a three-game series beginning Friday.
Friday will be a doubleheader at FMU’s Harry T. Moore Field, with the first game set for a 12 noon first pitch. The second game of Friday’s doubleheader will begin roughly 30 minutes following the completion of the first game. The third game of the series will be on Saturday at 12 noon.
Per University health and safety protocols, no fans – home or visiting – will be allowed to attend the games. All Florida Memorial home baseball games will be live streamed online and will be able to viewed for free.
The Lions (2-1) enter the weekend shaking their collective heads following a midweek non-conference loss to No. 4 St. Thomas University – a game that saw FMU take an early lead and stand toe-to-toe with the nationally-ranked power (being tied at 3 through the sixth inning) before the Bobcats capitalized on a couple of lapses by the Lions and pulled away.
The final margin of that game against St. Thomas aside, Florida Memorial saw that it can play with any team in the highly-competitive Sun Conference on any given night – and that’s without the bats of Yunior Sanchez (upper extremity), Joe Lucas (undisclosed), and Nathan Harris Jr. (undisclosed) in the lineup.
Sitting in the opposing dug out this weekend will be a USC-Beaufort team that comes in having won its past two games. The Sand Sharks (4-3) won the third game of its weekend series against St. Andrews University and followed that up with an 11-7 win over Columbia International University this past Tuesday.
The Sand Sharks have shown themselves to be a solid offensive squad up to this point in the season – having scored at least four runs in five of their seven games.
Getting hits and producing runs isn’t a concern for FMU head coach Florentino Burgos, his focus remains on the development of his bullpen. The Lions pitchers had a stress-free outing in the team’s season opener at Edward Waters (a 15-2 rout), then showed moxie by shutting down EWC in clutch moments to pick up a 2-1 victory in the second game.
Burgos used five different pitchers in the game against St. Thomas this past Tuesday, looking for an arm that could take some of the juice out of the Bobcats’ bats.
Lions ace Johnaikel Acosta is in line to start at least one game this weekend against USC-Beaufort as the Lions look to earn its first home and conference victories of the season.