No. 16/24 Baseball wraps up regular season in Emmitsburg, Md.

GAME NOTES

SMITHFIELD, R.I. – The No. 16/24 Bryant University baseball team wraps up regular-season play this weekend with a four-game Northeast Conference series at Mount St. Mary's.

Due to impending bad weather on Saturday, the two teams will play doubleheaders on Thursday and Friday. Both days will start at 1:00 p.m.

The Bulldogs (40-10, 22-4 NEC) enter the weekend looking to put the finishing touches on an outstanding regular season, while the Mountaineers (11-33, 8-20) return to the diamond after having all last week off. Bryant owns a 22-2 lead in the all-time series and has won the last 22 games in a row.

Bryant tied the program record for victories during the regular season on Tuesday and will try and break that this weekend. The Bulldogs have now won 40 games in three of the last four seasons and four times since 2000. Bryant won a program-record 45 games during the 2013 season.

Thanks to a 19-hit outing against UMass Lowell, Bryant brings a team batting average of .321 into the weekend, a number that ranks ninth nationally. The Bulldogs are also 15th in doubles per game (2.26), 25th in home runs per game (1.00), sixth in OBP (.413), eighth in slugging (.490) and 12th in scoring (7.9). Bryant also boasts the second-best run differential in the country (+4.2), trailing only Louisville (+4.6).

The Bulldogs feature seven players that are hitting over .300 and four that have scored 40+ runs and seven that have 30+ RBI on the year. Seniors AJ Zarozny (Shrewsbury, Mass.) and Dan Cellucci (Sudbury, Mass.) have been scorching hot the last two weeks for the Bulldogs, hitting .519 and .419, respectively. Zarozny is 14-for-27 with seven doubles, 14 RBI and seven runs scored since returning from an injury and Cellucci has a double, two triples, three home runs and 16 RBI over the last nine games.

Robby Rinn (Warwick, R.I.), another senior, has collected 77 hits and is batting .381 on the year. He clubbed two more doubles in Tuesday's win over UMass Lowell, the seventh time he's done that this year, and now has a career-high 22 two-baggers this season. Rinn sits just one double shy of tying the Bryant DI single-season program record and is two away from tying the all-time program record.

Bryant's pitching staff has also answered the bell this year and enters the weekend with the league's best ERA (3.39) and the most strikeouts in the league (365). Sophomore James Karinchak (Walden, N.Y.) will get the ball in the first game and will be shooting for his 11th victory of the season. If he gets it, he'll tie the single-season program record set by Stephen Sloan in 2004. Freshman Steve Theetge (Cicero, N.Y.) will start game two and is currently 7-0 on the year. Junior Brandon Bingel (Peabody, Mass.) (7-3, 3.97) and senior James Davitt (Wallingford, Conn.) (6-2, 4.06) will start the final two games.

Mount St. Mary's has had a tough year so far but will try and end it on a high note. They Mountaineers are hitting just .225 as a team and are averaging less than four runs per game. Ryan Owens leads the team with a .308 average, 48 hits and 21 runs scored. Zach Hostetter is hitting .270 and Tyler Post has a team-leading 25 RBI and has also scored 19 runs.

The Mount will start four seniors this weekend with Ben Smallenbroek and Chad Diehl getting the ball on Thursday. Austin Bonadio and Connor Graber will start games three and four. Smallenbroek is 1-4 with a 10.48 ERA in 15 appearances, Diehl is 2-9 with a 5.76 ERA and 49 strikeouts, Bonadio is 1-2 with an 8.78 ERA and Graber is 0-8 with a 6.92 ERA. Michael Kuypers is the Mountaineers' best option out of the bullpen, going 4-2 with three saves and a 4.25 ERA in 19 appearances.