Baseball Hosts Lehigh in Key Three-Game Weekend Series

Lehigh (18-13-1, 5-6 PL) at Bucknell (13-19, 5-10 PL)
When: Saturday, April 13, 12 p.m. (DH); Sunday, April 14, 1 p.m.
Where: Depew Field, Lewisburg, Pa.
Watch: ESPN+
Live Stats: BucknellBison.com

Bucknell at a Glance

Bucknell and Lehigh meet for the second time in as many weeks when the Mountain Hawks come to Depew Field for a three-game weekend series. Lehigh swept a doubleheader from the Bison last Sunday, winning two close games 6-4 and 6-5.
Bucknell has 10 games remaining in the 25-game Patriot League schedule, and the Bison need to make a late push for a top-four position and a Patriot League Tournament berth. At 5-10 in league play, Bucknell is currently at the bottom of the six-team standings, with 4-7 Lafayette and 5-6 Lehigh within sight.
The Bison won a mid-week pitchers' duel against Mount St. Mary's on Wednesday. Dante Pavone, Brady Swenson, Nikhil Patel, and Jonathan Adelmann combined on a six-hitter in the 3-2 win over the Mountaineers. Bucknell was held to four hits – two each by Billy Kender and Michael Trommer – but scratched out two runs in the sixth inning and one in the eighth to erase a 2-0 deficit. Matt Alexander's pinch-hit sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth provided the go-ahead run, and then Adelmann worked a 1-2-3 ninth for his first career save.
Bucknell has pitched much better in recent weeks, particularly out of the bullpen, but the bats have scuffled a bit after a hot start. The Bison are hitting .239 as a team over their last eight games.
Sean Keys is slashing .395/.521/.816, and he continues to lead the Patriot League in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS (1.337). Keys has seen his batting average dip under .400 for the first time since the second week of the season, and he now ranks third in the batting race behind Lehigh's Rafe Perich (.405) and Army's Chris Barr (.402). Keys also leads the league in doubles with 14 and is second in home runs with 10.
Keys has reached base safely in all but two games this season, and he has a hit in all but four. That includes a pair of four-hit games and a cycle – the fourth in team history – on March 26 at Mount St. Mary's.
Keys was listed as the No. 7 third baseman in D1Baseball's preseason positional rankings, and he is holding steady at No. 8 in the site's midseason rankings, which were released last week. Georgia star Charlie Condon, who many analysts project to be the No. 1 pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, sits atop DIBaseball's list of top-50 third basemen. Keys is the only player in the top 12 not from a team in the SEC or ACC. Ranked ahead of him are Condon, Tennessee's Billy Amick, Virginia Tech's Carson DeMartini, LSU's Tommy White, Alabama's Gage Miller, Florida State's Cam Smith, and Clemson's Blake Wright.
Keys now has 24 home runs and 103 RBIs in 96 career games. The 24 homers are tied for third-most in team history alongside Jason Buursma. Next on the list is Andrew Brouse with 30. Keys is the 13th player in team history with 100 RBIs, and his .704 career slugging percentage would be a school record. Jacob Corson hit the 100-RBI mark earlier in the season, and Grant Voytovich needs six more to hit the milestone.
Sophomore DH Michael Trommer has reached base in 13 of his last 17 plate appearances, and his .384 batting average ranks fourth in the Patriot League. Trommer's .985 OPS is ninth-best in the circuit. Last Sunday at Lehigh he hit his first career home run, and he just missed another one on Wednesday against Mount St. Mary's when his towering drive into the parking lot beyond the right-field fence was ruled foul.
After missing some time with a foot injury, Kender has come back swinging a hot bat. He is 7-for-23 (.304) with three doubles in the five games since his return. Going back to mid-March, Kender now has five multi-hit games in his last eight, and he has raised his season average to .310.
No. 1 starter Tyler O'Neill is coming off a complete-game win at Lafayette last weekend, and he has now gone at least six innings while allowing three runs or fewer in each of his last four starts. O'Neill struck out seven in his seven innings of work against the Leopards, and he now has 43 Ks in 41.1 innings pitched this season.
Patel has emerged as an option out of the bullpen in recent weeks. He earned his first win of the season on Wednesday against Mount St. Mary's, and he has only been scored upon in three of his nine appearances this season.
Brady Swenson has pitched two scoreless innings out of the bullpen in each of the team's last two games.
Head coach Scott Heather is in his 12th season at the helm, tying him with Bill Lane (1946-57) as the third-longest tenured coach in program history. Heather's 214 career wins are second-most in team history, trailing only Hall-of-Famer Gene Depew (591).
In each of the past two seasons, Bucknell has fallen to Army in the best 2-of-3 Patriot League championship series. The Black Knights have won each of the last five titles. Army and Bucknell were picked 1-2 in this year's preseason poll.

Lehigh at a Glance/Series History

Lehigh has had a strong season to date with an 18-113-1 overall record and a 5-6 mark in the Patriot League. The Mountain Hawks had a good showing at the Swig & Swine Classic in Charleston to start the campaign, posting a 2-0 win over Michigan State and an 8-4 win over No. 20 Iowa.
Last weekend, the Mountain Hawks lost both ends of a doubleheader to Navy before coming back to sweep Bucknell on Sunday. Lehigh then fell 12-4 to Rider on Tuesday in the semifinals of the Liberty Bell Classic.
Two of the league's top third basemen will square off this weekend with Bucknell's Sean Keys and Lehigh's Rafe Perich sharing the hot corner. Over the last week, Perich passed Keys in the Patriot League batting race, upping his season average to .407. Perich also ranks second in OBP (.517) and third in SLG (.627) and OPS (1.144), with Keys leading the conference in each of those categories.
Jake Whitlinger is hitting .308 and leads the Patriot League in runs scored with 32. Justin Butler has been one of the league's top power bats with nine home runs and 38 RBIs.
Lehigh ranks second in the Patriot League with a 5.15 team ERA..
Marcus Danchision leads the league in ERA at 1.98, while Teddy Toliver ranks fifth at 4.97. Danchision allowed only one hit and an unearned run over five innings last weekend against Navy.
Tommy Lamar is tied for the league lead with five saves.
Bucknell is 114-101 all-time against Lehigh. The Bison had won seven of the previous eight before dropping two in Bethlehem last week. The Bison swept the Mountain Hawks in the 2022 Patriot League Tournament semifinal series and then won four of the five meetings last season, including a couple of dramatic wins.
In the first meeting of last season, Keys hit a 463-foot, walk-off three-run homer to give the Bison a 6-4 win at Depew Field. Later in the season, Grant Voytovich hit two three-run homers in an 8-7 win in Bethlehem, and the Bison capped off that series with another 8-7 victory when Jacob Corson hit a three-run bomb with the Bison trailing 7-5 with two outs in the top of the ninth.
Last weekend, Lehigh won by scores of 6-4 and 6-5. Bucknell jumped out to early leads in both games and knocked Lehigh's starting pitchers out early, but the Mountain Hawks bullpen was outstanding in both games. Bucknell allowed only four hits in each game – all singles – but was hampered by some control issues and two errors in each contest.

Looking Ahead

Following the three-game series with Lehigh, Bucknell and Navy wrap up their season series with a single game in Annapolis on Wednesday. The two teams split a four-game set in Lewisburg last month, so this game will decide the season series. The Midshipmen play three games at Holy Cross this weekend before hosting the Bison.