Tulane Baseball Welcomes Creighton to Uptown
The Tulane baseball team comes back home after back-to-back road trips against Top-20 teams to entertain Creighton this weekend. Friday night's game is set for a 6:30 p.m. first pitch at Turchin Stadium. Saturday is set for 2PM, and Sunday's final of the series has been moved up to a Noon start to accommodate Creighton's travel plans.
Tough Loss Tuesday to #3 Mississippi State
The Green Wave are coming off a "close but no cigar" game against 3rd ranked Mississippi State on Tuesday, falling 11-7 to the Bulldogs in Biloxi.
"You know what, first at bat of the game was an 11-plus pitch walk against a really good arm," Tulane coach Jay Uhlman told us. "That was one thing that I thought we did a really nice job of all night was handling the real quality of their arms. They have really, really good arms. I was so proud of how we took at bats off those guys."
The Green Wave led 7-2 going into the bottom of the 7th, but the Bulldogs stormed back to take the lead by game's end.
"The fact that we were able to do that again against a highly ranked opponent, in this case number three in the country, that part, I feel good that there are things in there that were close," Uhlman continued. "Like I told the guys, getting there and close and playing that way and being in the game are one thing. Now the next step in the evolution is to get (win) a game like that."
Pitching Changes for This Weekend
The coaching staff has made some changes on the mound for this weekend. Saturday starter, Beau Sampson, has had trouble for the last three weekends. Sunday starter Jack Frankel will move up to the Saturday slot.
"Beau's going to go to the bullpen, so we'll move Frankel up into Saturday and then world-famous TBA on Sunday, and we'll see what we've got to match up with on Sundays. Placing him (Beau) in the bullpen, may help get his head back where it belongs, that's going to be contingent on his attitude. He's got to be able to embrace that change.
"He's got to roll up his sleeves and work on a few things and really get back to rhythm and confidence. That doesn't magically appear. You've got to be able to work at that, and then the opportunities that he gets out of the pen, he needs to execute the pitch and the plan."
We got to speak to the former Sunday now Saturday starter, Jack Frankel this week. We asked him about how he got Uptown, his regimen of preparation, and what he is wanting to see for his team against Creighton.
The interview can be seen on our YouTube channel. The specific link to the Frankel interview can be found here. There are dozens of other videos you can find there, including our regular coverage of Tulane Spring Football.
Weekend Starting Pitchers
The Green Wave will start graduate student Trey Cehajic on Friday. The right-hander went 5-2 last year in his second year as a member of the Green Wave. He sported an ERA of 4.89 with 57 strikeouts in 57 innings worked. He has started the first four Fridays this season with a 1-1 record, a 4.19 ERA in 19.1 innings thrown. He has struck out 25 while allowing 11 walks and 17 hits.
The Bluejays are starting junior righty Jack Pineau in the first game of the series. Pineau was named the Big East Pitcher of the Week on Monday. It was the second time he was honored weekly by the conference this season. This is his fifth start of the campaign. He is 2-0 with 23 strikeouts in 20 innings pitched. He is limiting opponents to a .221 batting average against.
Tulane will start the aforementioned sophomore right-handed pitcher Jack Frankel on Saturday. Frankel hails from Plano, Texas and is in his first year with the program. Last season, while at Liberty, he went 4-3 with a 3.40 ERA. He also struck out 32 in 45 innings pitched. Frankel has been the team's best starting pitcher in the early going with a 1-0 record to go along with a 3.54 ERA and 10 strikeouts in 20.1 innings thrown. He threw a complete game with one run allowed against Harvard (2/22) in earning the victory. This is his first Saturday start of the season although he was chosen to throw the middle game of the series on Sunday afternoon last time out against TCU.
Creighton is starting senior righty Ian Koosman in the second game of the series. This is Koosman's six appearance and third start of the season. He is 0-1 with an 8.56 ERA with 14 strikeouts in 13.2 innings thrown.
The Sunday starter for Tulane is to be determined depending on the results and relief pitcher usage through the first two games of the series.
Creighton is slated to start redshirt sophomore lefty Eli Nissen in the series finale. Nissen is starting his fifth game of the year. He has thrown 14.2 innings with 10 strikeouts on the year while limiting opponents to a .293 batting average against.
Scouting Creighton
The Bluejays won two of three games over the weekend at home against Gonzaga. The program lost to LSU on the road on Tuesday by an 8-4 score. Creighton held a 4-1 lead after three innings, but then saw the Tigers score the final seven runs of the game.
Creighton was predicted to finish second in the BIG EAST Conference's Coaches Poll this season after going 43-16 and winning both the regular season and the BIG EAST Tournament Championship last season.
Ben North has led the team with his 19 hits, two triples and .380 batting average. Nate McHugh sports a .333 batting average with 10 runs, 18 hits, two home runs and 10 RBIs. Connor Capece leads the club with 12 RBIs.
Shea Wendt has been the top reliever with a 1.08 ERA in six appearances. He has struck out 12 in 8.1 innings worked. Jack Pineau has been the top starter with a 2-0 record with 23 strikeouts in 20 innings pitched.
The program is coached by Mark Kingston. Kingston is in his first year in charge of the Bluejays but he has previously been the head coach at South Carolina (2018-24), South Florida (2015-17), and Illinois State (2010-14). He also previously was an Assistant Coach at Tulane where he assisted the 2005 team make a run to the College World Series.
The team's pitching coach Billy Mohl also has a few previous Tulane connections as a former member of the program as both a player and a coach. As a coach he assisted the team to 107 victories in three seasons under Rick Jones. In four seasons in uniform for the Green Wave, Mohl set the school single-season and career record for fewest walks-per-nine-inning average with marks of 1.27 (in 2003) and 1.67, respectively. The right-hander went 9-0 as a senior, becoming just the second regular starter in Tulane history to go undefeated. Mohl posted a career record of 25-7 at Tulane while striking out 224 batters and issuing just 57 walks over 308.0 IP.
In the fall of 2024, Mohl was inducted into the Tulane Athletics Hall of Fame.
Ripples
- Dating back to the end of last season, three of last four hits that James Agabedis III has are home runs.
- Jason Wachs has reached base safely in all 17 games this season
- Matthias Haas has reached base in each of the last 13 games.
- Johnny Elliott has reached base safely in his last eight games.
- Nate Johnson is hitting .412 with 11 RBIs in games he starts this year.
- Kaikea Harrison leads the team with six multiple run scored games.
- Tulane sports a 7-2 record this year in games that Hugh Pinkney starts behind the plate.
- The program is also 3-0 in games that Matthias Haas starts as the designated hitter.
- Haas has started at four different positions this season with five games at first, six games at third, three games in right field and three games as the designated hitter.
- Tye Wood leads the club with five two-out RBIs.
-Tulane hasn't won more than three in a row nor lost more than two in a row all season long through the first 17 games of the year.
-After leading the American Conference last season with 131 doubles as team, Tulane is again leading the league in two-baggers with 41 in the first 17 games.
-The program's pitching is averaging an impressive 9.8 strikeouts per game to place fifth in the American Conference. Tulane ranked second in the league in strikeouts a year ago with an average of 9.8 per contest.
-The Tulane pitching staff has recorded seven games with double figure strikeout total.
-Of the 23 new players on the roster this season, 19 have already made their Tulane debuts following the first 17 games of the season. The only newbies that haven't appeared in a game yet this season are RHP Max Mazinter, OF Cole Berge, OF/3B Matthew Major, and RHP Owen Geiss.
Portions Courtesy Tulane Athletics
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.