April 9, 2002

Samford hits the road for Starkville, Miss. Tuesday night as the Bulldogs will take on head coach's Tim Parenton's alma mater Miss. State in a midweek nonconference game. First pitch is set for 6:30 p.m. at Dudy Noble Field.

The Bulldogs are off to their best start under Parenton at 19-14. Samford had the weekend off after picking up wins over UAB and Alabama A&M last week.

In that last game against A&M, Robert Evans and Joe Denson each had three hits to lead the Samford bats as the Bulldogs defeated Alabama A&M, 18-1 at Joe Lee Griffin Field last Wednesday. Samford scored 18 unanswered runs after A&M took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. The Bulldogs pounded Alabama A&M pitching for 17 hits while allowing only seven hits and forcing A&M into four errors, which resulted into 12 unearned runs. Evans extended his hitting streak to 24 games, going 3-for-4 with three RBI while Denson was a perfect 3-for-3 with four RBI. Casey Graham picked up his second win of the season in relief of Major Allred. Allred pitched three innings, striking out six and giving up the one run on four hits. Graham struck out three in two innings and held A&M to three hits.

Mississippi State is coming off a Southeastern Conference series at home against Georgia in which State took two of three games winning game one and game two 7-5 and 14-4 but dropping the final game, 9-2. Jon Mungle finished the series 5-for-12 with four RBI. Casey Long leads MSU at the plate hitting .370 with 17 RBI. Mungle is hitting .344 and has driven in 20 RBI. Matthew Brinson is State's leading RBI man with 34.

Junior right fielder Robert Evans currently has a 24-game hitting streak heading into tonight's game with Miss. State. Evans started the streak in the last game of the SLU series, going 1-for-4. Evans is hitting .364 on the season with 19 RBI. Sophomore shortstop Joe Denson has also been hot lately. Denson went 4-for-7 last week with five RBI and is hitting .329 on the season. Along with Robert Evans and Denson, senior left fielder Cory Sumner has been on somewhat of a hot streak. Sumner has scored 10 runs in the last seven games to give him 38 runs scored on the season. Sumner has 137 total career runs scored which moved him ahead of Brooks Souders on the all-time career runs scored list.

Freshman right-hander Alan Bryan will get the start on the mound for Samford while Miss. State will counter with right-hander Jacob Blakeney (0-2, 6.87 ERA, 20 K's). Bryan will be followed by a host of Bulldog pitchers as Samford tries to return to form for this weekend's Atlantic Sun series at Troy St.

Samford and Troy St. are both 6-9 in the A-Sun. This weekend's three-game series against the Trojans gets underway Friday at 6:30 p.m. Saturday's doubleheader is set for 1 p.m.