Tulane Green Wave Baseball Preparing For Xavier, Final Series before AAC Play
The Tulane Green Wave baseball team has had a great start to the year and are sitting pretty with a 13-4 record.
This weekend's series against the Xavier Musketeers will be their final one before the American Athletic Conference starts.
So far this season, the Musketeers have a 7-11 record and are currently on six-game losing skid. To be fair to them, they have had an absolutely brutal slate of games as of late.
After they were able to actually split a series with the Stanford Cardinal, they had a midweek matchup against the Tennessee Volunteers. That was followed by a series against the Vanderbilt Commodores, which was then followed by a midweek against the LSU Tigers.
They've at least been competitive against the teams that they are supposed to be competitive against, so the Green Wave should be careful as to not overlook them because of a weak record.
The lone common opponent that they share is the Southeastern Louisiana Lions. Tulane beat them by a score of 5-3 while Xavier fell 7-4.
The Musketeers rank No. 235 in the nation with a team ERA of just 7.93.
There is no singular pitcher so far that has made a huge impact, but the Green Wave can probably expect to see a bit of right-handed pitcher Ben Weber.
Weber leads the team in innings pitched, but most of his appearances have come out of the bullpen. He has a 4.29 ERA and batters are hitting .277 against him.
One Tulane player that could take advantage of the weaker pitching is senior outfielder Jackson Linn.
Linn was one of the more promising returning sluggers on this roster, hitting 16 home runs a year ago, but has had an abysmal star to the year. He is slashing just .162/.200/.297 so far.
His last few games have been solid, though, so maybe he can carry over a bit of momentum.
Xavier's offense hasn't been much better this year as they have scored just 90 runs in 18 games, which ranks No. 201 in the nation.
They do have a slugger that could cause issues, though.
Senior outfielder Carter Hendrickson has had a great start to the year with a .328/.506/.541 slash line and three home runs this year.
This is a series that the Green Wave should realistically be able to sweep, especially at home. If they live up to that expectation, they will be in a fantastic spot leading into conference play which starts next weekend.
Here is the full schedule of games for this series:
Friday, March 14 @ 6:30 p.m. CT
Saturday, March 15 @ 2:00 p.m. CT
Sunday, March 16 @ 12 p.m. CT
All games will be streamed live on ESPN+.
