After four days away for Spring Semester exams, Radford returns to Big South action this weekend with a three-game series at Coastal Carolina beginning on Friday night.
The Highlanders will look to rebound from a three-game series sweep by Gardner-Webb last weekend at home – it was the first time Radford has dropped a league series since being swept at Charleston Southern March 25 and 26. The losses snapped an eight-game Big South winning streak, a first in program history.
Entering the weekend, Radford is in fourth place in the Big South standings and four games behind Coastal, which swept VMI at home last weekend to move two games up on second-place Liberty, and 3 1/2 ahead of third-place Gardner-Webb. The top four teams in the league standings automatically qualify for the six-team, double-elimination bracket in the Big South Tournament, which begins May 24 at host site VMI. Eight teams qualify for the tournament, but the bottom four seeds play a single-elimination play-in game to reach the main draw.
Radford's last win against the Chanticleers was in dramatic fashion in the 2009 Big South Tournament – the Highlanders rallied in the ninth inning for an 11-7 victory staving off elimination from the tournament. The last Radford win at Coastal Carolina was April 9, 2005 (7-6). The Chanticleers have swept each series since.
Coastal (30-15, 14-4 Big South) is back in the nation's top 30 in the Collegiate Baseball Writers' Poll (No. 29) and the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper Poll (No. 30). The Chanticleers have hit the 30-win mark for the 14th consecutive season, have seven wins in their last 10 games, and nine straight league wins at home.
