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The No. 21 Ole Miss Rebels baseball team host the No. 2 Louisville Cardinals for a weekend series tilt at Swayze Field.
Ole Miss enters the series with a prefect 4-0 after the defeating Arkansas State 4-3 on Wednesday night. As a club, the Rebels come into this series hitting .571 with 10 RBI when the bases are loaded.
Trent Blackman has recorded multi-hit games in all four contests this season, exceeding his total from all of last season.
The Rebels pitching staff are holding opponents to a .208 average at the dish.
Let’s take a closer look at this weekends opponent.
Louisville enters this weekend ranked No. 2 in nearly every national poll. The Cardinals have won all four games thus far in 2016, outscoring their opposition a combined 57-7. Five Cardinals received preseason All-America honors, led by junior Corey Ray and senior Kyle Funkhouser.
At the plate, Ray is hitting at a .733 clip with three home runs and nine RBI as the reigning ACC Player of the Week. On the mound, Funkhouser returned for his senior season after being selected in the first round of the 2015 MLB Draft. The head coach for Louisville is Dan McDonnell, a former Ole Miss assistant coach under Mike Bianco from 2001-2006.
The probable starts for this weekend for Louisville are Kyle Funkhouser on Friday, Brendan McKay on Saturday and Drew Harrington on Sunday. While coach Mike Bianco will send to the mound Brady Bramlett, Chad Smith and Sean Johnson to face the Cardinals this weekend.
Ole Miss and Louisville have met on the diamond 11 times prior to this weekend. With the Rebels holding a 6-5 lead in the series with the last season the midweek series got split.
Game times for this series are slatted for 4 p.m. Friday and 1:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Adam Brown is a hottytoddy.com staff writer and can be reached at adam.brown@hottytoddy.com.
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