Baseball team continues OVC play

Southeast Missouri State's baseball team started OVC play three weeks ago. The team has started OVC play with a conference record of 4-5. The team has played three, three-game series against Morehead State, the University of Tennessee-Martin and Southern Illinois Edwardsville. The team also has played a non-conference game against Missouri State and Central Arkansas.

The team's three games against Morehead ended in losses with scores of 9-12, 5-17, 2-3. The team came back the following weekend and swept UT-Martin at home 5-4, 14-1, 5-4. Over the weekend of March 24 through 26, the team went 1-2 against SIU-Edwardsville.

The team is optimistic for the season.

"I feel very excited for this season. I feel like we are a very good team and we are going to go a long ways into the season," junior first baseman Tristen Gagan said.

Anticipation is big for the team this year.

"I think our best baseball is yet to come," senior right-handed pitcher Clay Chandler said.

There has been improvement since the fall, the biggest being teamwork.

"The biggest improvement I would say is getting united every day, we really became one, we're really comfortable with each other and really trust each other now and relationships are stronger," Gagan said.

Two stand-out players to the team this year include freshmen second-baseman Danny Wright and shortstop Connor Basler. Wright graduated from Fort Zumwalt West and helped lead his high school team to a district championship his freshman year and conference championship during his senior year. Basler graduated from Valle Catholic in Ste. Genevieve where he started and lettered all four years and also was named all-conference, all-district and all-state his sophomore through senior years.

"If I wanted to lean on some guys that are really going to be beneficial to this club are two freshmen, Danny Wright and Connor Basler, we got two freshmen stepping up playing key roles right now, that's going to be huge for this team," Chandler said.

A common goal for the team is to make the OVC tournament and win the fourth straight OVC championship.

"The goal is not on beating any one team, but trying to put ourselves in a position to compete for another championship," head coach Andy Sawyers said.

Chandler has similar goals.

"The biggest goal is to make it back to where we were at last year, win the conference and make it back to regional," Chandler said.

Looking forward, the team hopes to work as one unit on the field.

"We've been up and down, we've had some peaks where we played really good, we've had a couple weeks where we didn't play as good. We can figure out how we can go about it," Sawyers said.

"I think right now we're trying to figure out where everybody fits in, I think. This is a team if we do see a little struggle at the beginning, I think by the end of the year we will be running on all cylinders," Chandler said.

The team competes again at 6 p.m. on Friday, March 31, at Capaha Field against Austin Peay.