SEARCY – So you are saying there's a chance. A combination of unlikely events has to occur this weekend for the Harding baseball team to qualify for the Gulf South Conference Tournament, but stranger things have happened.
Harding hosts Arkansas Tech for the final series of the regular season. The Bisons are 23-23 overall and 7-10 in GSC West action, good for fifth place. The Wonder Boys are 33-14 overall and 13-4 in conference and in second place.
For Harding to qualify for the postseason, Harding will have to sweep Arkansas Tech, the No. 6 team in the NCAA II South Region, and Arkansas-Monticello will have to sweep Henderson State, currently the GSC West's fourth-place team.
The three-game series between the Bisons and Wonder Boys begins Saturday with a single game starting at 2 p.m. Sunday the teams will play a doubleheader beginning at 1 p.m.
Harding won two of its three games last week at Arkansas-Monticello. Junior Jason Nappi went 12-for-21 in the series and earned GSC West Player of the Week, Harding's first hitter to win the award since 2004.
Nappi ranks in the GSC top 10 in several categories including batting average (6th, .417), runs (8th, 51) and RBI (5th, 55).
Redshirt freshman Anthony Guglielmi set a new Harding record in the UAM series. Guglielmi laced his school-record 19th double of the season, the second-most in the GSC. Eleven of his doubles have come in GSC games.
With this being the final home series of the season, Harding will honor seniors Troy Keith, Will McDonald, Donny Stephens and Patrick Nappi. Keith, a native of Magnolia, Ark., will likely start the first game of the series. It will be his 47th career start, the second most ever by a Harding player.
Arkansas Tech, which swept Delta State last weekend in Cleveland, Miss., enters the series with one of the most potent offenses in Division II. The Wonder Boys, currently riding an eight-game winning streak, rank 13th in Division II with 9.6 runs scored per game and 18th with a .355 batting average.
Tech has several outstanding weapons on offense, but arguably the leader of the group is junior Matt Johnson, a transfer from Tyler Junior College. Johnson is fourth in the GSC with a .420 batting average and leads the conference in hits (73), triples (6) and stolen bases (31).
The Wonder Boys also have an ace on the mound in senior Josh Floriani. The right-hander from Malvern, Ark., had not won more than three games in any of his first three seasons but is 10-1 this year. He is third in the GSC in innings pitched (77.1) and strikeouts (74).
Last season, Harding took one of three games against Arkansas Tech in Russellville. The Wonder Boys lead the all-time series 91-46.
Team Comparison
HU ATU
Batting Average .287 .355
Earned Run Average 6.50 5.96
Fielding Percentage .951 .951
