University of Richmond Athletics
Baseball Is No. 2 Seed At Stanford
05/26/2003 | Baseball
May 26, 2003
Video: ESPN2 Selection Show announcement and interviews with members of the Spider team
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UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. - The 2003 Atlantic 10 Champion University of Richmond baseball team will travel to Palo Alto, Calif. for the NCAA Tournament this weekend. The Spiders are the No. 2 seed and face No. 3 seed UC-Riverside at 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 30 at Stanford's Sunken Diamond.
Richmond (46-13) and UC-Riverside (40-15) are joined by top-seed Stanford (41-15), the national No. 6 seed, and No. 4 seed Illinois-Chicago (39-16). The Cardinal and Flames will play at 9 p.m. EDT on Friday. The Spiders have never faced any of those three schools in program history.
Ranked throughout the season, Richmond is currently No. 17, and will be making its eighth post-season appearance. The UC-Riverside Highlanders earned their first NCAA Tournament bid, competing in the Big West Conference.
The Spiders captured the program's first Regional title last year at Winston-Salem. Richmond was the No. 2 seed and defeated Wake Forest before advancing to the Super-Regional against Nebraska in Lincoln.
Led by 19th-year head coach Ron Atkins, the Spiders captured the Atlantic 10 title with a sweep of Massachusetts in last weekend's A-10 Championship Series. Atkins has compiled a 606-418-4 record (.591) at Richmond, including a 99-26 mark (.792) in the past two seasons.
Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year and Golden Spikes finalist, Tim Stauffer, leads a pitching staff that yields a 3.09 ERA. Stauffer (9-4 with a 1.87 ERA) has struck out 135 batters in 106.0 innings and thrown 10 complete games. Right-handed starters Mike McGirr (9-1) and Jason Bolinski (9-1) have earned a 2.48 and 2.58 ERA respectively.
After 59 games, the Richmond offense has hit for a .310 batting average. Sophomore Jim Fasano, the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, leads the squad with 14 homers, 63 RBI and 16 doubles and is second on the team with a .353 batting average. Atlantic 10 Tournament MVP Vito Chiaravalloti has raised his average to .305 and increased his home run (13) and RBI (53) totals with a hot bat in May. Freshman Ben Zeskind leads the Spiders with a .379 batting average.
Game schedule for this weekend:
Friday, May 30
Game 1 -- No. 2 Richmond vs. No. 3 UC-Riverside - 5 p.m. (Eastern)
Game 2 -- No. 1 Stanford vs. No. 4 Illinois-Chicago - 9 p.m. (Eastern)
Saturday, May 31
Game 3 - Loser Game 1 vs. Loser Game 2 - 2 p.m. (Eastern)
Game 4 - Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2 - 6 p.m. (Eastern)
Game 5 - Winner Game 3 vs. Loser Game 4 - 10 p.m. (Eastern)
Sunday, June 1
Game 6 - Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5 - 4 p.m. (Eastern)
Game 7 - Winner Game 6 vs. Loser Game 6 - 8 p.m. (Eastern) *
* -- if necessary
