March 20, 2008

The George Mason baseball team was supposed to spend today traveling to Boston to take on Northeastern in a three-game Colonial Athletic Association series. But for the second straight season, the Patriots will instead get to sit at home and rest, and wait for the Huskies to come to them. Inclement weather has once again forced Northeastern to cancel a home series in March with Mason and instead, make the trek to Fairfax to play as the home team at Spuhler Field.

Game time on Friday is 2:30 p.m. Saturday, first pitch is slated for 2 p.m. Sunday's contest is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. The Patriots are third in the CAA with a 4-1 conference record. Northeastern is seventh with a 1-2 mark. The Patriots took a two-game series from VCU and won a three-game series with Georgia State. The Huskies dropped a three-game series with Delaware.

Mason has been led by five starters batting better than .300. Ryan Soares is hitting .377 while Scott Krieger is hitting .373 with a team-high seven homers and 22 runs. He also has 17 RBI and is slugging .761. Justin Bour is hitting .355 with five homers and a team-high 18 RBI while slugging .677 and drawing 11 walks. Aaton Tenney is hitting .360 in six starts as designatd hitter and Spencer Wiggins is batting .304 with eight steals. Mason is 23 of 32 on the base paths and the Patriots have 22 homers.

Northeastern is batting .288 as a team and Mike Lyon leads the Huskies in batting average, homers, doubles, RBI, runs, slugging perentage and on-base percentage. He is hitting .453, slugging .887 and he has a .491 on-base percentage. He has eight doubles, five home runs, 14 RBI and 13 runs. Four other regulars are batting better than .300 with Frank Pesanello hitting .319 with four homers and 10 RBI. He and Lyon had nine of Northeastern's 11 homers. The Huskies are 6 of 14 on the base paths.

Mason is averaging one run more than Northeastern this year with an average of 6.6 per game to Northeastern's 5.5. Northeastern has a 4.95 team ERA. In Mason's past eight games, the Patriots have a 3.73 team ERA but have allowed 12 unearned runs.