Baseball | 5/13/2015 5:21:00 PM

SAN MARCOS, Texas – Texas State and UT Arlington face off this weekend in the final series of the regular season. Both teams play each other as part of the Sun Belt Conference's Rivalry Week on the final week of the season. The Bobcats, currently tied for seventh in the conference, and UTA, sixth in the SBC, are playing for their postseason lives on the bubble to reach the Sun Belt Conference Championship Tournament.
                  
Game Info: Texas State (20-29-1, 12-15 SBC) vs. UT Arlington (22-28, 13-14 SBC)
Site: Bobcat Ballpark – San Marcos, Texas
Date: Thursady – Saturday, May 14-16
Time: Thursday – 6 p.m. | Friday – 6 p.m. | Saturday – 1 p.m.
                                          
Probable Pitching Matchups
Thursday: #21 RHP Lucas Humpal (5-6, 5.15 ERA) vs. #42 RHP Chad Nack (5-4, 4.18 ERA)
Friday: #36 RHP Scott Grist (3-5, 5.78 ERA) vs. #45 RHP Joel Kuhnel (4-2, 2.90 ERA)
Saturday: TBA vs. #35 RHP Brad Vassar (2-6, 4.07 ERA)
 
The Series
Texas State and UT Arlington have a long and storied series dating back to the Southland Conference with the Bobcats holding a 57-43 edge. Head Coach Ty Harrington is 36-18 against UT Arlington in his career. However, UTA has swept the last three games in the series.
 
In last season's meetings, the Bobcats hosted UT Arlington, sweeping the Mavericks in San Marcos, but UTA answered with a sweep in Arlington on the final weekend of the regular season. In fact, in the last two games of the series, UT Arlington won, 1-0.
 
On the Mavericks
This season, UT Arlington has three separate losing streaks of five games throughout the year. But since the team's last five-game losing streak, the Mavericks have won five of their last seven with a sweep of UALR and taking two of three off a hot Appalachian State team.
 
The Bobcats will have to deal with strong starting pitching. Chad Nack, the Thursday starter has 42 strikeouts and just 14 walks with a 4.18 ERA, standing at 5-4 on the season while Joel Kuhnel is at just a 2.90 ERA with four wins, 36 strikeouts and just 14 walks. The Saturday starter is Brad Vassar with a 4.07 ERA, two wins and 25 strikeouts.
 
The Mavericks have a pretty good offensive group, hitting .272 as a squad. Travis Sibley, the younger brother of former Bobcat great Tyler Sibley, leads the team with a .340 batting average and has started all 50 games this year. He is the only Maverick to do that. He has 71 hits with 15 doubles and a team-high 42 RBI. With 13 walks and five hits by a pitch, he has a .392 on-base percentage.
 
Four Mavericks are hitting .300 or better, but they have struggled with power. The group has only hit 11 home runs compared to Texas State's 40. Levi Scott leads the squad with four while Sibley has knocked out three.
 
On the Bobcats
Texas State has done great on offense lately, scoring 25 runs over the last three games and 50 runs over the last six games. Unfortunately, the Bobcats have struggled at the mound a little bit which resulted in a 12-10 loss and an 11-10 loss as part of a sweep by Arkansas State this past weekend.
 
The Bobcats knocked out five home runs on the weekend against Arkansas State with two from Cory Geisler. He finished the weekend with five RBI and eight runs on five hits with a .417 batting average and a .563 on-base percentage. The team, as a whole, hit .348 for the weekend, led by Tanner Hill at .462. Behind him, both Colby Targun and Zach Sullivan hit .444 while Ben McElroy joined Geisler at .417, and Cedric Vallieres finished the weekend hitting .400. Hill, Geisler and Vallieres all drove in five runs apiece for the weekend with Vallieres adding four runs scored.
 
In addition to Geisler's two homers, Vallieres, Hill and Granger Studdard each knocked a roundtripper against the Red Wolves to boost the Texas State total to 40, good enough for third in the Sun Belt Conference.
 
Texas State, though, also finished the weekend with a 10.33 ERA from the team's pitchers, including a 13.89 ERA from the three starters. The Bobcats gave up 31 runs, all earned, on the weekend, so Texas State will be looking to improve on the mound to support the team's batters this weekend.
 
A Look Ahead
If the Bobcats struggle too much this weekend, the season will come to an end. If Texas State gets the job done, the Bobcats will head to Troy, Ala., for the Sun Belt Conference Championship Tournament that will be held Wednesday through Sunday.