Game Notes

HIGH POINT, N.C. - The High Point University baseball team welcomes the Spartans of UNCG to Williard Stadium on Tuesday at 6 p.m. for the back-end of a home-and-home series with their cross-town rival. UNCG claimed the first game between the two, 12-6, on March 27 in Greensboro.
 

Date	HPU Probable Pitcher	UNCG Probable Pitcher	Live Video	Live Stats
Tuesday, Apr. 10 6 p.m.	TBA	RHP Dan Loats, Sr. (0-2, 3.65)	Link	Link

History vs. UNCG: High Point and UNCG have crossed paths numerous times in recent years, matching up for the 28th time on Tuesday evening. The Spartans victory in the first matchup avenged the Panthers' 1-0 victory at Williard Stadium last year.

HPU and UNCG met just once last year after opening the season against one another in 2015 and 2016. HPU enters Tuesday's matchup looking to avoid a season sweep for the first time since 2011. High Point is 3-1 at home in the last four matchups.

The Spartans: UNCG swept a conference series at Western Carolina over the weekend and enters action Tuesday with a tremendous 24-7 overall mark bolstered by a top-10 offense. The Spartans are third in the nation in batting average (.320) and have registered the seventh-most hits (350) in the NCAA.

Five regulars in the lineup have an average of at least .350, led by Cesar Trejo who is hitting .419 in 31 games with four homers and 33 RBI. Trejo is seventh in the nation in hitting and is joined in the top 25 by Andrew Moritz, who ranks 22nd with a .403 average. Moritz had three hits in the first matchup and was one of five Spartans who recorded multiple hits in the 12-6 win.

PROBABLE PITCHERS
• High Point: The Panthers have not announced a starter for Tuesday's game at the time of publication.

• UNCG: Senior Dan Loats will make his 11th appearance and sixth start of the year for UNCG. The Spartan senior last appeared on Sunday at Western Carolina when he threw a scoreless inning of relief. Loats started last week against North Carolina A&T and gave up three runs (two earned) on six hits in 4.2 innings.

About the Weekend: High Point swept its first conference of the series in emphatic fashion, dispatching of Charleston Southern 7-2 and 9-2 on Friday and Saturday before coming back for a 4-3 victory on Sunday.

The Panthers belted nine homers over the weekend, including six in Saturday's win. HPU's pitching staff limited CSU to seven total runs and played errorless defense in the set. It marked the first sweep since a three-game brooming of CSU last May and the first road sweep since three wins at UNC Asheville in 2016.

#BombSquad: The Panthers' nine homers over the weekend continued a ridiculous stretch for HPU's bats. High Point set a regular season program record with six dingers on Saturday, including multi-homer games from senior Hunter Lee and redshirt-junior Daniel Millwee.
Seniors Blake Schunk and Austen Zente have each hit four home runs in their last six games, including two each over the weekend.

HPU now leads the league and ranks 22nd nationally in homers this year with 34, including 20 against the Big South in just 12 games. The Panthers started slow, hitting only three homers in the first 13 games, but have struck for 31 blasts in the last 18 contests.

Zente Named Player of the Week: Thanks to his consistent dominance at the dish, senior Austen Zente was named the Big South Player of the Week for Apr. 2 - 8. Zente hit .529 (9-17) with three homers and scored seven runs during HPU's four games against Elon and Charleston Southern.

He joins senior Rion Murrah (Relief Pitcher of the Week, Apr. 2), freshman Travis Holt (Freshman of the Week, 3/26), senior Jordan Sergent (Player of the Week, 3/19), junior Cooper Jeffers (Relief Pitcher of the Week, 3/12), and freshman Tanner Wells (Freshman of the Week, 3/12) as High Point's recipient of a weekly award in the last five weeks.

Lean on Lee: Senior Hunter Lee enters the weekend on a team season-best 23-game hitting streak, nine games shy of the all-time school record. During the stretch, Lee is 39-for-96 (.406) with 12 multi-hit games (six of the last seven) and 23 RBI. The senior has proven to come through in the clutch with eight two-out RBI, six go-ahead RBI, and five game-winning RBI.

Lee has extended his hitting streak in his first plate appearance nine times, more than any other PA. Saturday's ninth inning hit was just the second time in the streak Lee extended the streak in his fifth plate appearance. He has now extended the streak via home run three times, including Saturday at Charleston Southern.

Return of Zente: Senior Austen Zente missed four games from 3/10-16 after colliding with the wall in HPU's victory over Coastal Carolina on March 9. Since his return on March 17, Zente has been on fire, hitting .455 (25-for-55) with four doubles, a triple, six home runs, 24 runs scored, and 14 RBI. Zente has hit safely in 13 of his last 14 games and scored at least one run in each game.

This year, Zente has scored a team-high 31 runs in 67 times on base, a 46.3% success rate. Since returning from injury, though, Zente has reached base 41 times in 14 games and scored a preposterous 24 times (58.5% success rate).

Up Next: HPU continues the road-heavy portion of its gauntlet with a four-game road swing through suburban Charlotte. The Panthers take on Gardner-Webb for three games from Friday-Sunday (6 p.m., 2 p.m., 2 p.m., respectively) before making a mid-week appearance at Charlotte next Tuesday.

#GoHPU