ST. PAUL, Minn. – Concordia-St. Paul head baseball coach Mark "Lunch" McKenzie has announced that this weekend's three-game series with Augustana has been moved to Des Moines Area Community College. The two schools will play a single game on Saturday before playing a doubleheader on Sunday with first pitch at noon both days.
 
SCHEDULE INFORMATION
With the mid-week snowfall in both St. Paul and Sioux Falls, the two teams have agreed to move south to Iowa to play their weekend series. CSP and Augie will open the series with a single nine-inning game on Saturday at noon on the campus of DMACC. They will return to action at noon on Sunday for the first pitch of a seven-inning contest before playing a nine-inning game shortly after the completion of the first game of the day to wrap up the series.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Last week, Concordia picked up an extra-inning game two win against UMary to pick up a split before dropping three games to Northern State over the weekend.
 
CSP's pitching staff tallied 40 strikeouts in 37.0 innings of work while putting up a .281 opponent average and a .397 slugging percentage against on the week. Offense was hard to come by for the Golden Bears as they were held to eight runs a team slash line of .193/.261/.236 in the five games.
 
Zach Lauzon took a tough luck loss on Sunday as he allowed just one hit over 7.2 innings while walking two and striking out five. Ben Suits paced the Golden Bears at the plate as he went 7-13 (.538) with a double, two walks, two RBIs and a run scored.
 
AUGIE SERIES HISTORY
The Golden Bears head into this weekend's series with a record of 4-27 against the Vikings. CSP's wins have been split fairly evenly over the all-time series with Augie as they have tallied wins in 2009, 2011 and two in 2016. Since Concordia's last win, Augustana has rattled off nine consecutive wins, including three in the NSIC Tournament. The two schools have met 12 times at a neutral site with CSP going 1-11 in those meetings.
 
LAST MEETING WITH THE VIKINGS
In last year's NSIC Tournament Championship, the fifth-seeded Concordia Golden Bears baseball team's late push fell short in a 10-9 loss to second-seeded then-#11 Augustana at Karras Park.
 
For the second time in three years, the Golden Bears saw their impressive run to the title game ended by the host school as the Vikings followed in the footsteps of the 2016 St. Cloud State squad that went a perfect 4-0 to win on their home field. The loss dropped CSP to 14-19 all-time in 11 trips to the NSIC Tournament.
 
The Golden Bears found themselves holding a four-run lead heading to the bottom of the fourth, but for the second day in a row the Vikings utilized a huge six-run fourth to take the lead for good. Concordia faced a four-run deficit with two innings to play and managed to cut it to one with the go-ahead run in scoring position, but Augie managed to stem the tide and secure the 10-9 victory.
 
CSP's offense went out with a bang as they hammered out 14 hits and nine runs with four of those hits going for extra bases. Carter Schmidt and Patrick Bordewick continued to rack up hits in bulk as both slashed out three hits apiece. Schmidt had a double, scored twice and drove in another to finish at 9-22 (.409) for the tournament to claim a spot on the All-Tournament Team. Bordewick added two more doubles to give him four for the tourney along with a home run to seal his All-Tournament Team selection. The two hitters were joined by Gus Varland as the three Concordia representatives on the All-Tournament Team.