Marshall, Texas – The Centenary baseball team opens its 2020 season on Friday as the Gents face the East Texas Baptist University Tigers in a non-conference game with first pitch set for 7 p.m. at Woods Field.
The Gents and Tigers will then meet on Saturday at Shehee Stadium in a doubleheader beginning at 1 p.m. Live stats and live video will be available for all three games between the teams this weekend. The two teams are meeting for the ninth-straight year with Centenary winning seven of the last 11 matchups. ETBU finished 30-14 overall last season including a 17-7 record in American Southwest Conference play.
The Gents, led by 10th-year head coach Mike Diaz, finished 18-23-1 last season including a 10-8 mark in SCAC play. The Gents qualified for the SCAC conference tournament for the seventh-consecutive season. Diaz enters his 16th with the program as he served as associate head coach from 2005-2010. He is a stellar 210-161-1 and 81-30 in SCAC play and guided the Gents to SCAC regular season championships in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2018. In 2017, the Gents made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history, becoming only the third Centenary athletics team (and the first in more than a decade) to reach NCAA postseason play. The Gents predicted to finish fourth in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference this season by the league's coaches based on balloting in the annual preseason coaches' poll.
"We are excited to start the season as we want to see where we stack up against outside competition after competing against each other for the last few months," said Diaz. "The start of a new season is always exciting and we have some high expectations so we are ready to get going."
Centenary will face Louisiana College at home in another non-conference doubleheader on Feb. 15 at 2 and 5 p.m. and then are on the road for eight games until returning home to play host to Trinity for a three-game series (Feb. 13-14) to open Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference play.
The Gents will play 40 regular-season games, 15 at home and 25 road/neutral contests. Centenary is away from home for their final seven games of the year with a pair of SCAC series' versus University of Dallas and Texas Lutheran and a single game at Louisiana College. The Maroon and White will play eight of 12 games at home from March 27 to April 14.
A link to the complete 2020 schedule can be found here: www.gocentenary.com/sports/bsb/2019-20/schedule
Live stats and live video are available for all home games and admission is FREE to all Centenary home athletic events. #GoCentenary #CTheOpportunity
