The Southeastern baseball team is off to a hot start on the season, winning their first six games, half of which have come against top-20 ranked teams in the NAIA.
Coming off a successful 3-0 weekend in Arizona, The Fire hold a team .302 average with 10 home runs and 53 runs batted in.
Josh Smith leads the team with a .563 average, along with five doubles and seven RBIs. The pitching staff for Southeastern has been near perfect, with a 2.08 ERA, paired with 81 strikeouts and an opposing batting average of .167.
Darien Smith is the highlight of the Fire pitching staff coming into this week, allowing only one hit and zero earned runs in 11 innings.
This week, they will look to a familiar face in Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a team the Fire saw last season. The Fire saw the Eagles in a three game series last February, where they took all three games and outscored the Eagles by 20 runs. This was the first series between the two teams, the only other time they met being 2011 for a single game which the Eagles won.
Oklahoma Wesleyan will be missing a key player from last year in
Tommy Davis, who hit .461 with two home runs last year against the Fire. This year, Davis is a part of the Southeastern squad, and will look to help defend Ted A. Broer against his former team.
Oklahoma Wesleyan comes into this week 4-1, with one game against Warner University before traveling to Lakeland to face the Fire. Through five games, the Eagles are hitting .336 as a team, outscoring their opponents 52-16. Ravaughn Morgan leads the Eagles on the offensive side, hitting .650 with five RBI's and four doubles. On the pitching end, the Eagles have a team 4.50 ERA, averaging just over one strike out an inning, punching out 36 in 34 innings.
First pitch between the Fire and Eagles will be this Thursday, February 8th at 6 P.M.
