The Eastern baseball team has four Ohio Valley Conference opponents left on its schedule, with three sitting in front of the Panthers in the standings.

Belmont will be the first of those three foes to play Eastern and for Panthers’ coach Jim Schmitz the message is clear – win.

“It’s pretty simple we have to win the series against Belmont,” he said. “The next three teams we play are really in there, as Morehead State, EKU and Belmont are above us.”

Eastern is currently in 10th place in the OVC, needing to jump four teams to get into position to advance to the conference tournament, or fall in danger of missing postseason play for the second straight season.

“If we do well in the next three weekends I think we could look at Tennessee-Martin and say OK, let’s go sweep,” Schmitz said.

Following the Belmont series that starts Friday for Eastern, the Panthers will play on the road at Eastern Kentucky, come back home to play Morehead State and then finish the season at Tennessee-Martin.

But before Eastern can think about sweeping the Skyhawks in the regular-season finale, it has to worry about Belmont.

The Bruins rank near the bottom of the OVC in batting average, (10th) slugging percentage, (ninth) on-base percentage, (10th) hits (11th) and most importantly they are ranked last in runs with 64 in 18 conference games on offense.

But, Schmitz is looking at the other side of the ball.

“Belmont can pitch really well, really well,” Schmitz said. “Belmont’s not going to walk people and they’re going to strikeout a lot of people.”

In the Bruins’ 18 OVC games, their pitchers have walked 59 batters, which is the second fewest in the conference behind Murray State’s 52. Belmont also has the third most strikeouts with 147, trailing Tennessee Tech and Morehead State, which have 148 and 149 strikeouts, respectively.

Belmont has allowed the fewest earned runs in the OVC and has the second best conference ERA at 4.30.

Eastern played Tennessee Tech earlier this season and lost two of three games to the Golden Eagles. In that series, the Panthers faced a similar pitching staff that records many strikeouts, while not walking several hitters. During that series, Eastern was aggressive at the plate, swinging early in counts, which is what Schmitz wants his team to continue doing.

Eastern is coming off a 3-2 loss at Illinois and a series loss against OVC foe Southeast Missouri, but Schmitz said he feels good heading into the Belmont series because of the way his starters have been pitching.

“Joe pitched, Matt pitched, everybody pitched well against Illinois and we played great defense against Illinois,” Schmitz said.

Joe Greenfield pitched eight innings in his last start Saturday, getting the win over Southeast Missouri, as he allowed two runs on six hits – his best outing of the season.

Matt Borens pitched a scoreless inning Tuesday at Illinois and leads all Eastern pitchers in innings thrown at 69.2, as he has pitched at least seven innings in six of his 10 starts this season.

The Eastern offense goes up against Patrick McGrath, James Buckelew and Austin Coley, who have 3.88, 2.42 and 3.28 ERAs, respectively.

“There aren’t going to be a lot of runs and we have to have the mentality of each inning, trying to get on and score a run or two,” Schmitz said. “They aren’t going to give you a lot of runs, so we’re going to have to score accordingly and not wait for that big inning.”

The series starts at 3 p.m. Friday at Coaches Stadium and will continue with 1 p.m. starts Saturday and Sunday.

“There’s nothing really to talk about – we just have to go out there and play,” Schmitz said.

Aldo Soto can be reached at 581-2812 or asoto2@eiu.edu.