Nashville Regional preview: Presbyterian

Here's a look at the Presbyterian Blue Hose, Vanderbilt's Friday night opponent in the Nashville Regional.

2021 record/RPI: 22-21 (135)

Coach: Elton Pollock (337-551-1 at Presbyterian, 17th year)

Rank in polls: unranked

Rank in conference: 18-16 (fourth)

Last NCAA tournament appearance: first

2021 recap

Presbyterian, which entered Division I in 2008, completed a three-game sweep in the Big South tournament to earn the school's first NCAA tournament bid. The Blue Hose didn't even have a program until 1988, when Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin launched it and coached it until leaving for Clemson for an assistant's position after the 1993 season.

The Blue Hose are guided by one of Corbin's former Presbyterian players in Elton Pollock. Presbyterian was picked eighth of the Big South's 10 teams, but earned a surprise fourth-place finish.

Then, Presbyterian pulled upsets over Campbell in its first and final conference tournament games in Fayetteville, N.C.--the Camels won the league at 28-9 and were good enough to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament--to earn a trip to Nashville.

Presbyterian started its season 0-5, losing a three-game series at Auburn to start the season and that eventually became a 2-8 beginning to 2021. But the Blue Hose won five of their last six games against the league's eventual seventh- and ninth-place teams (Winthrop and High Point, respectively) to gain some confidence heading into the league tournament.

The Blue Hose can take encouragement from how they played Campbell, the best team on their schedule according to the RPI, which ranked the Camels 37th. (Other computers didn't think as highly of Campbell.)

But other stats were more sobering: Presbyterian was out-scored by 46 runs on the season (303-257) and went 11-15 on the road.

The Blue Hose will need to carry that offensive momentum they established last week in Fayetteville, N.C., where they scored 24 runs in three games, to have a chance to continue their success.

It's not a star-studded lineup--Presbyterian didn't place a player on the first-team All-Big South team, though it did put two on the second team--but the Blue Hose averaged 6.0 runs per game this year, thanks to 46 home runs. The leaders in that category were honorable mention All-Big South left fielder Zacchaeus Rasberry, who smacked 10, and corner infielders Sean Klein and Eric Toth, who each had eight.

Rasberry, a fifth-year senior, led the Blue Hose in homers in league regular-season play with seven and was named MVP of the league tournament.

The Blue Hose hit .262/.350/.410 across all games, and by today's standard did a decent hob of putting the ball in play (8.4 strikeouts per nine innings) while taking free passes 4.9 times per contest.

Defensively, catcher Jake Wyandt stood out, fielding .989 while gunning down 13 of the 26 runners who tried to steal and earning second-team all-conference honors. Presbyterian fielded .966 as a team and allowed 44 unearned runs.

Pitching was not the team's specialty: Presbyterian allowed 7.0 runs per game and had a 6.10 ERA. That came on the heels of the 2020 team, which posted an 8.48 ERA during the 16-game season.

Freshman Charlie McDaniel, Presbyterian's No. 1 starter, was fairly durable over his 11 starts, going at least 4 2/3 innings in nine of them. He allowed one run and struck out six in the title-game win. Before that, he allowed 20 earned runs in his previous four starts, spanning 21 1/3 innings after allowing exactly one run in four of his first six starts.

Duncan Howard, another freshman, joins McDaniel as the team's only other 11-game starter. Howard has struggled to go deep into games recently (his last two starts have been 2 1/3 and 3 innings) but flashed what he could do by spanning 16 innings over his first three starts while allowing just two runs.

Redshirt senior Brandon Williams seems to be in the rotation heading into the NCAAs, starting the team's second game in the league tournament. However, Williams's listed high pitch count for the year is 69 and he allowed five runners and three runs in that start.

Fifth-year senior Eric Miles was the Blue Hose's Friday night starter in 2020, when he had a 4.15 ERA across 26 innings, Miles didn't fare as well this year, allowing nine home runs (and 27 extra-base hits) across 47 2/3 innings. Miles's career has seen better days--a 3.97 ERA spanning 93 innings in 2019--but had a disastrous middle to the 2021 season, allowing 26 earned runs over a four-start stretch before being pushed from the rotation.

Closer Eric Toth is durable, having thrown over 40 pitches six times. The two-way player saved both wins over Campbell in the league tournament.

Kyle Benson led the team with 23 appearances, while Alex Flood (who tied for second with 14) also started six games.

Freshman two-way player Chris Veach was the team's most effective pitcher; he didn't throw much late in the year but gave Presbyterian three scoreless innings in the win over Gardner-Webb.