The Ball State baseball team will switch gears after facing a struggling Wright State University and head to the University of Miami (Fla.) for a three game series which starts Thursday.
"It's a neat series for the program, for our guys to go down and play in that environment against a program as solid as Miami," Beals said.
The Hurricanes enter the matchup with a 37-11 record and ranked No. 6 by Baseball America. The Hurricanes haven't played on the road since April 11 and will be 16 games into a 22-game home stand when the Cardinals arrive. They are 30-7 this season at home including an 11-4 mark during the home stand.
"We know that's going to be a great challenge for us," Beals said.
The Cardinals are expected to start senior LHP Mike Johnston (3-6, 3.91 ERA) on Thursday, sophomore RHP Joe Ness (6-3, 4.18 ERA) on Friday and senior RHP Andrew Anderson (5-3, 4.91 ERA) on Saturday.
"I fully expect our guys to show up and be sharp down there," Beals said. "It will be a good contest right before our conference tournament to kind of sharpen ourselves up a little bit."
On the Cards' offense, Miller holds a .374 batting average with 14 home runs and Franz leads the team in RBI with 62.
"Miami is going to be one of those series where we're the team with nothing to lose," Franz said. "We can just go out and play loose and pick up a couple wins and have a lot of confidence heading into the MAC Tournament."
The Cardinals have finished their MAC schedule, but the rest of the league will wrap up their schedule this weekend, allowing the MAC Tournament field to be set.
Ball State is guaranteed a spot in the six team field, but their seeding is not a sure thing yet. Currently they would enter as the fourth seed and would play third seed Eastern Michigan.
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