Pride baseball enters NAIA Coaches' Poll at No. 20

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Following their non-conference slate through February into early March, the Clarke University baseball team jumped from completely unranked in the preseason to the No. 20 team in the NAIA Coaches' Top 25 Poll for the first in-season rankings release of 2023.

The Pride have started 7-6 with four of those six losses coming against new No. 5 Georgia Gwinnett College and No. 22 Oklahoma City University and another coming to No. 21 William Carey University, who CU took two out of three from with all of those games coming as true road games.

Clarke has earned a 4-1 neutral site record, including winning each of their four games at the Cajun Collision by a combined score of 42-3 including a weekend-ending 6-2 win over University of Science and Arts, who was the No. 19 teamin the preseason poll.

Much like their solid 2022 season, Clarke's pitching staff has been a big part of their success as their four starters of Tyson Tucker, Isaac Rohde, Johnny Blake, and Greg Bennett all an ERA of 4.09 or lower at 17 or more innings pitched.

Rohde in particular has been rock solid to start the year, earning Pitcher of the Week on Feb. 27 and having double digit strikeouts in each of his first four starts of the season leading to a 15.33 K/9 rate, all of which have been complete games. Bennett has seen an increased role on the mound to make him a quality two-way player for CU to a team-leading 1.06 ERA while hitting for a .318 average.

Another group of four on the offensive side have gotten off to a strong start to 2023 as well led by 2022 All-Heart second baseman Victor Lara, who currently leads the team in batting average (.457), hits (21), runs (13), and RBIs (13) as he also has more walks (6) than strikeouts (5) in his 46 at bats.

Shortstop Bubba Thompson has provided the pop, leading the team in doubles (7), home runs (3), and slugging percentage (.756) while touting a .366 batting average and .509 on base percentage, both significant improvements from his 2022 numbers.

The rest of the up the middle of the Pride offense in centerfielder Daniel Phyle and catcher Paul Von Zboray have produced consistently as the only other players in the lineup with over 40 at bats through the first 13 games as Phyle is hitting .325 and getting on base at a .426 clip while Von Zboray has provided some pop as well with a double and three triples for a .450 slug with his .275 batting average.

Clarke baseball will head into Heart of America Athletic Conference play as they will open up next Sunday and Monday with a four-game series against MidAmerica Nazarene University with both days' doubleheaders being played in Parkville, Mo. and scheduled to start at 12:00 p.m. CT.