The Eastern baseball team will embark on one of its toughest road trips of the entire season this weekend when the Panthers travel to Hattiesburg, Miss., for a three-game series with Southern Mississippi.

This will be the second consecutive week the Panthers go on the road to face a solid team. Last time out, Eastern was swept in a three-game series by Mississippi, who at 11-0 are ranked in every major college poll including No. 12 in “Baseball America.”

With Southern Mississippi (12-1) early in the season, Panthers head coach Jimmy Schmitz is expecting quite a challenge from the Golden Eagles, similar to what he witnessed from their instate rival.

“We’ve talked to a few schools about them and Southern Miss. is really good,” Schmitz said. “Last season they were one game away from going to the Super Regionals, which is one step from the College World Series.”

In seven of the Golden Eagles’ 13 games, the team has scored at least 10 runs and winning every contest. The high water mark was 21 tallies against Oklahoma State in early March. Schmitz credits powerful bats along with superior coaching for the Golden Eagles’ fast start.

“They’re the most offensively minded team we’ve faced so far,” Schmitz said. “They’ve got a lot of experience and (Coach Corky) Palmer does a wonderful job with them. This weekend will be another test for us.”

If the Panthers are to pass this “test,” the team will need a better performance from their pitching staff. In the three games against Ole Miss, Eastern gave up 37 runs to the Rebels including 16 and 18 in games one and three respectively. Schmitz said the morale of the pitching staff is solid despite their rocky weekend.

“They’re saying they lack confidence, but the guys are fine,” Schmitz said. “The best way to go out and get confidence is for the team to take the field and perform. We (coaching staff) can say we have all the confidence in them, but they need to go out and get it themselves.”

If the Eastern bats continue to perform like they did when the Panthers pounded out 16 hits and 10 runs in game three of the Mississippi series, the pitching staff may get all the confidence needed to pull of an upset. Despite Eastern losing the heart of their batting order to graduation last year Schmitz has been pleased with the lineup to date.

“The bats have really been coming along fine this year,” Schmitz said. “We need a few guys like (first baseman) Mike Gavin and (second baseman) Chris Uhle to pick it up a notch, but I think we will have a more solid and balanced lineup then in the past few years.”

The Panthers will enter play with a 1-5 record, and have lost their last five tilts since a shocking upset of 2003 College World Series participant Southwest Missouri State to open the season. However, the Panthers record can be somewhat deceiving as they have faced one of the most difficult schedules in recent memory. According to Schmitz the team needs to keep their head in the game and the Panthers can get through this tough stretch.

“The key to all of this is having a good perspective,” Schmitz said. “The team needs to stay focus because this weekend could be a bumpy ride. Last weekend we had six errors in one game and we can’t have that in this series.”

The weekend series at Pete Taylor Park/Hill Denson Field will get underway with a night game of Friday followed by two afternoon contests on Saturday and Sunday.