Dallas Baptist may not be a household name to many college athletics fans.
But anyone who knows anything about college baseball, knows about the Patriots.
Louisiana Tech fans will get a firsthand look at the No. 1 RPI team in the country tonight when the Bulldogs host Dallas Baptist at 6 p.m. at JC Love Field at Pat Patterson Park.
“That’s all you need to know about them. They are No. 1 in the RPI and they have the No. 1 strength of schedule to this point,” said Tech head coach Lane Burroughs. “They have played some really good teams.”
The Patriots will face another really good team in LA Tech winners of 11 of its last 12 games. Tech (18-6) entered the Top 25 this week in a couple of collegiate polls, including No. 21 in Perfect Game USA and No. 23 in Collegiate Baseball.
The Patriots (15-8) are ranked No. 17 nationally in D1 Baseball.
“They were one win away from the college world series last year,” said Burroughs.
Dallas Baptist has already swept a three-game series against Southern Miss and just took two out of three from 20th ranked Maryland this past weekend.
The Bulldogs posted a 4-0 record last week, winning at No. 14 LSU 7-6 in 12 innings and outscoring FIU 37-4 over the weekend series sweep.
Greg Martinez is slated to make his third start on the mound Tuesday night. The right-hander started at LSU in the win last Wednesday posting four strong innings and striking out five.
The Patriots will start right-hander Zach Heaton against the Bulldogs. Heaton will make his second start of the season in Ruston. The redshirt junior holds a 5.14 ERA over 14 innings and tossing a 15 to four strikeout-to-walk ratio.
The Bulldogs and Patriots will meet for the 25th time in the program’s history. LA Tech leads the all-time series 13-9. The last time the teams met on the diamond was 2013 at Dallas Baptist as LA Tech took the series winning two out of three games.
