NORFOLK, Va. – The Norfolk State baseball team hits the road for its final MEAC series of the 2019 regular season this weekend, as the Spartans face Maryland Eastern Shore in a three-game set Friday through Sunday at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium in Salisbury, Maryland.

Games are slated to begin at 1 p.m. each day.

Standings Watch
The Spartans (19-21, 14-7 MEAC North) enter the weekend still in the hunt for a regular-season divisional title. NSU sits one game behind Coppin State (15-6 North), and NSU and the Eagles split their six regular-season meetings. CSU would clinch the division with a sweep of its series at Delaware State, but even one Eagle loss to DSU opens the door for the Spartans.

Should NSU and CSU end up tied for first place in the division, the Spartans would wind up with the No. 1 seed from the division in the MEAC Tournament based on the teams' records vs. DSU, the next-highest team in the division standings.

Scouting the Spartans
NSU has won its last four MEAC series and three of its last four games overall following a 2-1 series win over Delaware State last weekend at Marty L. Miller Field. After dropping the opening game with the Hornets 14-0, NSU bounced back to win game two, 4-2, and then took the rubber game 3-2 in walk-off fashion on Caleb Ward's RBI single in the bottom of the 10^th.

Several Spartans have been swinging hot bats lately. Freshman catcher Ty Hanchey has batted .555 over the last 11 games and senior outfielder Justin Hayes .455 over the same time frame. Ward has 14 runs batted in and Alsander Womack 12 during that stretch. Hanchey is the reigning MEAC Rookie of the Week following his 6-for-10 effort in five games against Longwood, N.C. Central and DSU last week.

Junior first baseman Stephen Baughan continues to move up a couple of NSU's statistical record lists. He hit his MEAC-leading 17^th double of the year last Sunday, tied for the fifth-most in school history for a single season. Chris Joyce set the record of 23 in 2010. Baughan, who is also tied for the MEAC-lead with five home runs this year, has 16 round-trippers in his career, tied for 10^th in school history.

Senior Chase Anderson (23 career wins) remains one win away from tying Devin Hemmerich's school record for pitching wins in a career.

Scouting the Hawks
Maryland Eastern shore (10-39, 4-17 MEAC) has dropped its last seven ballgames, including a pair of mid-week games at Pitt and a three-game series at Coppin State last weekend.

Catcher Carson Davis continues to lead a group of four Hawks batting at least .270 this year. Davis is hitting .309 with two home runs. D.J. Doherty checks in at .281 while steady lead-off man Brian Cordell hits at a .270 clip with five triples.

The Hawks are strong on the base paths. MDES has accumulated 71 stolen bases this year, second in the MEAC behind only NSU's 102. Infielder Dillon Oxyer leads the team with 12, following by Devynn Hancock with 10 and Cordell with nine.

MDES will be playing its final home games of the year against the Spartans this weekend. The Hawks are in fourth place in the Northern Division, with NSU, CSU and DSU having clinched the three spots from the division in the MEAC Tournament later this month.