ABILENE – Abilene Christian baseball will take a detour from Western Athletic Conference play this week as it hosts Texas Tech in a midweek matchup before a three-game series versus Indiana. The Red Raiders and the Hoosiers are the final power conference opponents on the Wildcats’ schedule.<\/p>\n
ACU welcomes Texas Tech to Crutcher Scott Field at Bullock Brothers Ballpark at 6 p.m. Thursday for Pack the Crutch Night, presented by First Financial<\/a>. Over 2,500 fans filled the ballpark for the West Texas foes’ matchup last season, with the past four matchups in Abilene averaging an attendance of 2,804. The 2022 matchup attracted a record-4,087 Wildcat faithful.<\/p>\n Tuesday’s game can be streamed on ESPN+<\/a> with Roman Raffaeli (play-by-play), Jaden West (analysis) and Daisy Strine (field-level) on the call. Collin Adams<\/a> is slated to start on the mound for ACU after issuing three scoreless frames in the Wildcats’ win over TCU last week.<\/p>\n The Wildcats then head to Bloomington, Ind. for the second leg of a home-and-home series with the Hoosiers. ACU hosted Indiana in a three-game set in Abilene last season. The series begins at 5 p.m. (CT) Friday before a 1 p.m. (CT) first pitch on Saturday. The weekend wraps up at 11 a.m. (CT) Sunday at Bart Kaufman Field.<\/p>\n Each of this weekend’s games will be streamed on Big Ten Plus<\/a>.<\/p>\n One week ago, the Wildcats picked up their first power conference win of the season and their 13th under head coach Rick McCarty<\/a>. ACU beat the Horned Frogs 4-1 in Abilene for the Wildcats’ 16th win over a power conference opponent since transitioning to the Division I level in 2014.<\/p>\n ACU and Texas Tech previously met on March 31 in Lubbock, where Thompson’s three-run home run, his first long ball of the season, highlighted a 15-4 loss. The Wildcats’ only win over the Red Raiders came in 2022 in Lubbock, where ACU picked off No. 9 Texas Tech for the program’s first victory versus a top-10 team.<\/p>\n The Wildcats are coming off a weekend series versus Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas, where they earned an 11-4 win on April 10 before their comeback came up just short in a 10-9 loss in the rubber match. ACU’s victory was highlighted by four consecutive home runs in the fourth inning.\u00a0Gavin Brzozowski<\/a>, Zandt Payne<\/a>, Diego Cardenas<\/a> and Grant Watkins<\/a> each went yard within the span of 13 pitches in the offensive explosion.<\/p>\n Kanon Sundgren<\/a>, Payne and\u00a0Cardenas collected six hits apiece over four games last week, with five of Cardenas’ going for extra bases. Sundgren touted a .643 on-base percentage. Watkins and Cardenas each hit a pair of home runs to raise their season totals to 18 and 17, respectively. Cardenas, Brzozowski and Nick Arias<\/a> combined for 16 runs batted in.<\/p>\n WILDCATS DIG THE LONG BALL – The Wildcats have developed into one of the most powerful teams in the nation at the plate this season, tying for 12th with 67 home runs alongside No. 13 Virginia. Grant Watkins<\/a> and Diego Cardenas<\/a> rank fifth and sixth nationally with 18 and 17 long balls, respectively. Both are atop the WAC standings. ACU is the only team in the country with two hitters ranked within the top 10. Over the past two seasons, Watkins and Cardenas have combined for 70 home runs with 34 and 36, respectively. Cardenas also leads the conference with 50 RBIs.<\/p>\n JUCO BANDITS – ACU’s 2026 roster features a heavy representation of former junior college players, including many of its top performers. Sixteen Wildcats competed at a junior college before making their way to Abilene. That list includes nine position players (Thompson, Payne, Arias, Watkins, Hardcastle, Cardenas, Baier, Brzozowski, Sundgren) and seven pitchers (Greanead, Galvan, Jeon, Swaim, Young, Patterson, Adams). Nine Wildcats were previously on power conference rosters (Thompson, McGarrh, Jones, Brzozowski, Batten, Jeon, Coleman, Sundgren, Whiteaker).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABILENE – Abilene Christian baseball will take a detour from Western Athletic Conference play this week as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-248824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}