TCU Correspondent Stephen Francis Previews

The 10th-ranked TCU Horned Frog baseball team will continue their Big XII Conference portion of their schedule Tuesday night as the Texas A&M Aggies come to Lupton Stadium.  The contest will be televised live on The Mountain (DirecTV Channel 616).

TCU's Jason Coats had a 3 home run game last Sunday. (TCU photo)

Texas A&M enters the game with a solid record of 20-10, however they’ve faced a tough season on the road and are 3-6 outside of College Station.  Nick Fleece will start for the Aggies and brings a 1-0 record with a 4.50 ERA into the contest.  Tuesday’s game will mark the fifth start of the season for Fleece.

Speed and efficient hitting have been the keys to the offense for the Aggies, who enter Tuesday night’s showdown hitting .310 as a team with 24 home runs, 57 doubles, 12 triples, 53 stolen bases and 188 runs scored.  Brodie Greene leads A&M in batting average (.387), home runs (seven), and RBI (28).  He’s a great hitter with some solid “pop” in his bat that likes to get on base.  He’ll run as well and could create problems for Horned Frog pitching if he gets on base.

Paul Gerrish will start for the Frogs and is 1-2 with a 3.15 ERA.  Gerrish was on the losing end of last Tuesday’s game against Oklahoma.  Offensively, TCU brings a little bit more muscle into the game.  The Frogs are batting .337 as a team with 36 homers, with 85 doubles, 10 triples, 33 stolen bases and 261 runs scored.

The game is the seventh Big XII match-up of the year for the Frogs and is also the seventh Tuesday night game they’ve played in 2010.  TCU is 5-1 against the Big XII with wins over Texas Tech (3/5, 3/12,3/13,3/14,3/15) and Missouri (3/6).  The Frogs lost their first game of the season to a Big  XII opponent last week vs. Oklahoma, whom they’ll face again in Norman on 4/20.  The tour of the Big XII will wrap up with a two-day home-and-home series against Baylor on 4/27 and 4/28.

(Stephen Francis contributes to Collegebaseball360.com and writes for Examiner.com.)