Erie, Pa. - Mercyhurst baseball gears up for the PSAC Tournament this upcoming week with the opening round set for Wednesday, May 8th. The Lakers begin their run in the tournament with West Chester, looking to get some revenge for their loss to the Golden Rams last season when they meet at 4:30 p.m. at Slippery Rock University.

A Look Back

The Lakers are 21-19 on the season with a 18-10 mark in the PSAC, after dropping eight of their first 10 games to open the year, the team turned it on once conference play opened up. Mercyhurst was especially dominant in the month of April, going 13-4 over that time as they won four-straight conference series. Their offense was a big reason for that strong run in the month with a total of 126 runs scored for an average of 7.4 runs per game, reaching double figures four times with 16 on three occasions with their most recent outburst coming in their series finale with California (Pa.) on April 27th.

Playoff Layout

Merrcyhurst finished as the three seed in the PSAC West with the team now set to see the second seed in the East, West Chester, at 4:30 on Wednesday. It will be IUP (W2) and Millersville (E3) who kicks the first round off as they will play at SRU on the 8th at 9:30 a.m. before East Stroudsburg (E1) and the host Slippery Rock (E4) compete at 1:00 p.m. Rounding out the first day of action will be Seton Hill (W1) and Shippensburg (E4) at 8:00 p.m.

Laker Leaders

Mitchell Grosch currently leads the Lakers in batting average with a clip of .403 while his 52 hits are the most of anyone on the team. Zachary Kourous has the most RBIs (38) stolen bases (16), and triples (3) of anyone while his 11 strikeouts are the fewest among hitters with 100 or more plate appearances. Chris Juchno has also carried a big stick to this point with him being second among the Lakers in OPS at 1.070 to go along with a team-high 21 extra base hits thanks to his nine home runs. On the mound, Corbin Foy has the lowest ERA among qualified pitchers with a mark of 1.94 to go along with his 51.0 innings of work, fanning a team-high 63 batters while allowing a minuscule batting average against of .194.

Scouting the Golden Rams

West Chester finished the regular season with a record of 39-7 to tie the most wins in program history in a regular season while going 25-7 in the PSAC. The team has been hot here of late as they have won each of their last six including a sweep of Millersville while splitting their four-game set with East Stroudsburg. They have been the best offensive team in the conference this year, leading the way in batting average (.330), OBP (.442), and hits (455) while coming in behind only the Lakers in SLG (.472) Their offense has been led by Anthony Boccio who is batting .415 on the year with a 1.197 OPS with 17 extra base hits and 40 walks. His 15 stolen bases come in third on the team as he is one of five Golden Rams to steal 10 or more bases, making this one of the more active team on the base paths in the conference.

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