When the Ball State University baseball team travels to Charlestown, South Carolina, this weekend, it will be seeing some faces it's never seen before in the opposing dugout.
Towson University, The Citadel and Le Moyne College will join Ball State in the round-robin Citadel Tournament.
Ball State (1-2) has never played two of these opponents - Towson and Le Moyne College - and the Cardinals have played The Citadel only two other times, splitting the games.
"Kind of the focus of the weekend is to play our style, and we'll be fine," coach Greg Beals said. "I think we do a good job as a program of our scouting and our preparation, but it's the same for each team. They're going to have some information on us also."
The Cardinals have played in the city of Charlestown before, but have never played in this tournament.
"I like the idea of playing in a tournament where we get to play three different teams, so we'll have two games with a neutral site opponent," Beals said. "It's a neat town to go to, some history there."
Towson was swept by Virginia last week and holds an 0-3 record entering the tournament. Senior Chris Rhoades is expected to take the mound for Towson against Ball State. He struck out four, walked two and allowed two earned runs in his appearance against Virginia.
Two wins against Hofstra this week improved The Citadel's record to 4-2. Offensively, sophomore Chris Swauger has gotten off to a fast start, batting .522 with 12 hits and nine runs batted in.
The tournament will be Le Moyne College's first test of the season. Led by senior shortstop Mike Affronti (.343 batting average, 19 RBI), Le Moyne finished 25-22 last season.
For the Cardinals, the tournament offers an opportunity to bounce back from a disappointing showing against Alabama-Birmingham last weekend. The Blazers won that series, 2-1, with Ball State's lone win coming in a 13-inning thriller. Sophomore Kyle Heyne pitched the final five innings to pick up the win, striking out six and allowing one hit in the process.
"I was just able to hit my spots and keep the ball low," Heyne said. "I got ahead of the hitters, and once you're ahead of the hitters it's a lot easier to work when you're ahead of the count."
Beals said Heyne, despite the number of innings, threw less than 50 pitches. That number usually gets a pitcher through three innings, but because of his efficiency, Heyne was able to throw longer.
"Kyle was spectacular," Beals said. "He was getting outs, getting quick outs, getting quick ground ball outs. We felt he was OK to go the distance."
For the performance, Heyne was named Mid-American Conference West Division Pitcher of the Week.
"It was a great honor," Heyne said. "It was surprising to me. I wasn't aware of it until one day I was lifting and Coach Stafford came up to me and said 'Congratulations' and I didn't know what he was saying at first."
Although the Cardinals were able to produce 11 runs on 17 hits in that win, they could only muster one hit the following game in a 3-0 loss.
"I think it was just a little bit of bad luck," senior first baseman Brad Miller said. "We really hit some balls well that did not fall for hits, and sometimes that happens. Guys started pressing, trying to do too much, and things just didn't work out for us."
After three games, Miller leads the Cards with a .429 batting average and six hits.
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