Auburn baseball will face its toughest competition of the postseason in Coastal Carolina. Here’s how D1Baseball sees this series shaking out.
Auburn baseball is set to face its toughest competition this postseason when it hosts Coastal Carolina for the NCAA Super Regionals at Plainsman Park.
Campus is buzzing as the Tigers are hosting an NCAA Super Regional for the first time in program history, and a record crowd is expected to witness this weekend’s action as Auburn officials have added general admission viewing areas to ensure that Plainsman Park will be an electric atmosphere for the appetizer for next week’s College World Series.
Will the Tigers feed off their home field advantage? Or will Coastal Carolina spoil Auburn’s good time? Experts at D1Baseball shared their prediction for this weekend’s series, and are split down the middle on how they see this series shaking out. Out of the 11 writers that submitted predictions, six are projecting the Tigers to advance to Omaha while five are siding with the Chanticleers.
Both teams will rely heavily on its pitching staffs to combat the strong sticks that will be on display this weekend. Seven of Auburn’s top lineup pieces are hitting over .300 entering the series. The top three batters in Auburn’s lineup: Ike Irish, Cooper McMurray, and Chris Rembert, have over 70 hits and double-digit home run totals. Coastal boasts comparable stats with six batters hitting .300 or better, with Blake Barthol and Sebastian Alexander creating the most problems for opposing pitchers. Not only does are the duo hitting above .300, but they have over 10 home runs each and have stolen over 12 bases. Alexander leads the team, as well as the Sun Belt Conference, with 27 swiped bags.
Both Tigers and Chanticleers will throw their top pitchers in game one: Cameron Flukey for Coastal Carolina and Sam Dutton for Auburn. Both aces have seven wins on the year and own over 90 strikeouts. Flukey struck out nine batters in last Friday’s Conway Regional opener against Fairfield over seven innings, where he allowed two runs on three hits. As for Dutton, he struck out three batters and allowed five runs on seven hits in Auburn’s 8-5 win over Stetson in the winner’s bracket game last Saturday.
Game one between Auburn and Coastal Carolina begins at 8 p.m. CT and can be seen live on ESPN2.
Contact/Follow us @TheAuburnWire on X (Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Auburn news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Taylor on Twitter @TaylorJones__
#D1Baseball #predicts #Auburn #Super #Regional
