TicketsCINCINNATI -- The Cincinnati baseball team, winners of five-straight series and 14 of its last 19 games, will look to end its regular season on a high note against Texas Tech. The Bearcats climbed to No. 18 in Baseball America, its highest since finishing No. 13 in 1971.
The Thursday and Friday games begin at 6 p.m., followed by Saturday at 1 p.m. that includes pregame senior recognitions for five players: Adam Brouwer, Logan Knight, Christian Mitchelle, Joel Pineiro and Dillon Schueler.
Thursday includes $5 domestic beers all game long, an extension of the daily pregame special. Friday's features 9 Innings of Winnings: prizes for season ticket holders throughout the game.
Nate Taylor needs six and 20 strikeouts to break Cincinnati's single-season and career records. He has a 2.03 ERA in six home starts, including 60 Ks and nine walks. His 104 strikeouts are eighth in the nation and third in the Big 12. His 20 career wins are also one away from tying that record.
Cincinnati's 499 strikeouts have surpassed last year's school record of 496. Another mark to watch is the 111 stolen bases (fifth among P4 schools), which comes on the heels of a school-record 134 last year. The Bearcats' 75 homers are also their fifth-straight year in the 70s.
The pitching staff allowed only 20 runs over the seven-game road trip. Through 53 games, Cincinnati has its best team ERA since 2018, with that 4.95 mark ranking third in the Big 12. UC leads the pack with 16 saves (one off the record), with Adam Buczkowski and Dominic Mauro pacing the pen with five. Chad Brown also has three to go with an amazing 5-0 record as a freshman reliever.
Saturday starter Logan Knight went only 3 1/3 innings against WVU before suffering an injury. He made it back the next Sunday at Houston, throwing 4 1/3 scoreless innings on a pitch count. He then produced a quality, 6-inning start at K-State. UC has won each of the last five games he's pitched.
Enzo Infelise's .371 batting average is both a team-high and the best among Big 12 freshmen. He is also hitting .402 in home games. Ryan Tyranski, another part of UC's five freshmen or sophomores out of the top-six on the stat sheet, is .393 at home.
Quinton Coats overcame the weight of his eight games on 23 homers before breaking Mike Spina's 17-year-old mark at Oral Roberts. He mashed his 25th at K-State on Saturday, the game-winning three-run bomb as the Bearcats trailed 3-1 in the eighth. UC is 18-3 when he homers. He is fifth nationally, and third in the Big 12, in that department, while ranking seventh in total bases (161, five away from UC's season record) and 10th in RBI (67).
Coats has a 24-game reached-safely streak, second only to Infelise's 30 from earlier in the season. Coats also has a 10-game hit streak, finding new ways to counter pitchers' avoidance.
Cincinnati is averaging 8.7 runs at home with a 17-6 record. UC is also 19-7 in May regular season games over the Jordan Bischel era, with the 100 wins marking the most of any three-year stretch in program history.
The Bearcats are 29-5 when leading or tied after six and 26-6 when scoring six-plus runs.