- North Carolina Series Notes(.PDF)
| Seth Whitehill will get the nod on the hill in Friday night's opening game of a three-game series at No. 1 North Carolina this weekend. |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; March 1, 2007 - After a bye weekend, the Penn State baseball team returns to action this weekend with a three-game series at North Carolina. The runner-up at last year's College World Series, the Tar Heels are ranked as high as No. 1 in national polls. This will mark the second straight year that Penn State has played a team that competed in the previous season's College World Series. Last year, Penn State also played at Tulane and Arizona State; both teams played in the 2005 CWS.
The Nittany Lions are coming off a 1-3 weekend in Shreveport, La. two weeks ago. In their first win of the season over Centenary on February 18, Scott Gaffney made his first career start, throwing six innings. He was named the Big Ten's Pitcher of the Week. Also throwing well on the mound were both Craig Clark and Seth Whitehill. Both kept the Nittany Lions in their respective games. Clark gave up just one earned run in five innings and Whitehill went eight innings, tied for a career high, and gave up just three earned runs to keep Kansas State off the scoreboard over his final six innings of work. Reliever Ryan Stobart and Drew O'Neil also turned in solid performances as well and O'Neil picked up the first save of the year for Penn State.
The Penn State bats also got hotter as the weekend went along. After being shut out in the first game of the weekend, Penn State slugged out 34 hits in the final three games. Rick Marlin had a career high three hits in the finale on Sunday against Centenary, highlighted by his first career home run, while Matt Cavagnaro hit .421 in the series and was named the Big Ten Player of the Week. He has a seven-game hitting streak entering this weekend. Newcomer Mike Deese hit in all four games as well and hit .389 for the series.
North Carolina enters the weekend series with a 9-0 record after picking up a pair of wins over Gardner-Webb and No. 22 Coastal Carolina this week. Over the last two weekends, the Heels have swept Seton Hall and Stony Brook in three-game series.
Penn State will start Whitehill in game one on Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. He will be followed by Clark on Saturday at 1:00 while Gaffney will get another start on Sunday also at 1:00.
After this weekend, Penn State will head out to the Midwest for its spring break trip with games at Wichita State, Kansas and Oral Roberts. After that, the Lions will turn attention to their home opener on March 21 against Pitt in what will be the first college game at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.