Game Notes

WESTFIELD. Ind.—The Grand Valley State baseball team found it's annual Florida trip to be a mixed bag of results last week. After a pair of victories, three losses and a tie on the trip, the team sits at 7-6-1 as it heads down to Indiana for the Midwest Regional Baseball Crossover, hosted by the University of Indianapolis in Westfield, Indiana.
 
The Crossover features teams from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the Great Midwest Athletic Conference and the Great Lakes Valley Conference in a 12 team showdown. GVSU will play Lewis University out of the GLVC on Saturday morning to begin the tournament, followed up with a matchup against host University of Indianapolis at 1:30 pm on Saturday. A pair of Sunday matchups against GLVC foes Missouri S & T (10:30 am) and Drury (1:30 pm) make up the remaining Laker opponents for the weekend. The opener against Lewis has since been declared cancelled, due to inclement weather, with the remaining games set to be played as scheduled. 
 
Grand Valley State showed no lack of offense during the southern trip, scoring 55 runs in seven games and hitting .360 as a team during that span. In fact, the Lakers raised their team batting average nearly 40 points during the course of the seven game stretch, from .274 up to the current mark of .319. That mark is the fourth highest team average in the GLIAC this season, and the Lakers lead the conference in hits, with 167.
 
The Lakers bright spots on the trip came in the form of three separate victories, the first of which was a 13-0 shutout of Alderson-Broaddus. In that game, junior Kyle Lawson pitched a gem, going nine full innings while allowing just four hits and striking out eleven batters.
GVSU followed up that win with another solid performance in the next game against Slippery Rock, a 6-1 victory.
 
The most recent game was a victory against Rockhurst, a 17-9 scoring outburst that marked the highest run total for Grand Valley State this season. Anthony Villar led the way with three hits, three runs and six RBI's, and leads the team with a .457 batting average while tallying 14 RBI's on the season, the second highest total on the team.
 
Villar and Keith Browning (15 RBI's) lead a capable lineup of Lakers hitters. Grand Valley State features ten players with double digit hits through it's first fourteen games, and has shown both an ability to get on base and to steal bases with success, as they have been caught stealing just twice in 18 tries.
 
With Saturday's opener against Lewis University, slated for a 10:30 a.m start, cancelled due to inclement weather, the first game for GVSU will likely be the Saturday matinee against University of Indianapolis. The Greyhounds are 11-3 on the season, and have impressive numbers through the first part of their season. However, Indianapolis will be playing it's first neutral site games of the year at the Crossover, whereas GVSU has already played in eight such games.
 
The Greyhounds are batting an impressive .335 on the season, scoring 113 runs in 14 games, with two different hitters (Kyle Orloff and Anthony Asalon) both batting over.400 on the season. Orloff's .490 average is the 2^nd highest in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, and his five home runs is tied for the conference lead.
 
Sunday's first game against Missouri S & T will be just the second matchup all time between the two schools, with Grand Valley having won the only other matchup between the two.  The Miners are 11-5 on the season, having won their last two games before the Crossover. Their .318 team batting average is the fourth best mark in the GLVC, while their 158 total hits on the season is the second highest total in the conference.
 
The fourth and final game for GVSU will be a 1:30 Sunday contest against Drury University, a familiar opponent for Grand Valley. The Lakers have already faced the Panther this season, defeating them 7-2 on February 26^th. In that game, Keith Browning had a pair of hits and three RBI's in support of starter Troy Dykhuis, who pitched seven strong innings to earn the win.
 
Live stats will be available for each game, and can be accessed via the schedule page on gvsulakers.com.