Northwest Wayne News

Wayne State University's baseball team is preparing for its final conference road trip of the regular season. The team, which holds a 24-16 overall record and a 13-9 record in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC), will face Davenport University in a four-game series from Friday to Sunday. The games are scheduled to take place in Caledonia, Michigan, with the first game on Friday at 4 p.m., followed by a doubleheader on Saturday at 1 p.m., and concluding with Sunday's game at noon.

In their most recent series, Wayne State faced Grand Valley State, winning the opener 10-5 but losing the subsequent three games. Meanwhile, Davenport has shown strong performance recently, winning four out of its last five games. This includes a non-conference victory against Hillsdale and taking three out of four games against Parkside.

Earlier this season, Wayne State played against Davenport in Hammond, Indiana. Wayne State won both games of that doubleheader with scores of 12-0 and 6-2. Karter Fitzpatrick delivered an impressive performance with ten strikeouts and no runs allowed in one game. Griffin Kilander also contributed significantly by allowing only one earned run over seven innings.

Historically, Davenport leads the all-time series against Wayne State with a record of 15-11. However, Wayne State has recently dominated their encounters by winning five consecutive meetings and seven out of the last eight matchups.

Davenport's team batting average stands at .278 while maintaining a team ERA of 6.69. Josh Robinson leads his team with a .393 batting average. On the pitching side, Carson Fischer and Austin VanderMarkt have been effective for Davenport.

For Wayne State, several players are hitting close to or above .300 including Kyle Ray (.340) and Tony Hatzigeorgiou (.331). Karter Fitzpatrick is leading the pitching staff with a 3.60 ERA over 65 innings pitched.

The NCAA regional rankings were released recently featuring Wayne State as one of nine teams listed alphabetically in this initial release alongside Saginaw Valley State from GLIAC.