I’ll have a preview story of the huge three-game series between Liberty (37-12, 18-3 Big South) and Coastal Carolina (42-6, 20-0) in Friday’s News & Advance. There were a few topics I didn’t get to touch on in the newspaper story, so I wanted to get to them here.

** First off, the probables for the series:
FRIDAY, 7 p.m.—Coastal Carolina’s Anthony Meo (10-1, 1.71) vs. Liberty’s Steven Evans (7-1, 3.33)
SATURDAY, 7 p.m.—Coastal Carolina’s Cody Wheeler (9-0, 3.71) vs. Liberty’s Shawn Teufel (10-1, 2.10)
SUNDAY, 1 p.m.—Coastal Carolina TBA vs. Liberty’s Dustin Umberger (2-2, 5.31)

—Meo is pronounced MAY-oh.
—Saturday’s game would normally start at 4 p.m., but it has been pushed back to accomodate Liberty’s commencement.
—LU coach Jim Toman told me that Umberger is the “projected” starter Sunday, but I’m under the impression that designation is very tentative. Depending on who is used out of the bullpen in the first two games, I wouldn’t be surprised if either Dane Beakler or Keegan Linza were in the mix for the Sunday start.

** Coastal Carolina will be down a man, as infielder Steve Davis has been ruled academically ineligible. More information can be found here in Myrtle Beach Sun News reporter Josh Hoke’s blog.

Davis, who spends time as an infielder and as a designated hitter, was batting .322 with four home runs and 28 RBIs for the Chanticleers.

** Two regional projections are out this week. Mark Etheridge of SEBaseball.com has Liberty as the No. 3 seed in Charlottesville playing Stanford. Rivals.com has Liberty as the No. 3 seed in Norwich, Conn., playing Connecticut.

** Rivals.com’s Kendall Rogers’ weekly notebook mentions Liberty twice. It can be found here.

** Liberty coach Jim Toman weighs in on the importance of the series:

“I’ve been here three years and this is definitely the biggest series to date, and arguably the biggest in the history of Liberty. We’ve done well, and we have 37 wins. I think there are only six or seven teams in the country with more wins than us, but Coastal is one of them. They’ve got 42. We know what we’ve got ahead of us, and we just have to find a way to try to win the series.“

“Coach (Gary) Gilmore does a great job and he has a great staff. They’ve been there a long time. They know how to get good players. He doesn’t always go after the marquee recruits that the other ACC and SEC teams are going after. But he kind of finds the diamonds in the rough. He’s done a good job doing that and bringing in kids that end up being pretty good draft picks.“

“We need to beat Coastal at least once, if not twice. We have them on our field. They know what’s on the line. But we’ve been for the last three or four weeks, just about every game has been a regional for us, because when you’re a mid-major and you lose one of those midweek games or maybe a home game against a team you’re supposed to beat, or even conference gams on the road, just one game kills your RPI. To our guys’ credit, we’ve done OK. We’ve put ourselves in a great position. We still have seven games left and the tournament. So a lot of baseball to play. We’re right there on the brink of getting an at-large bid, but we’ve got to have a good weekend in order for that to happen.“

Toman on focus during the 15-game Big South win streak:

“We’ve just been playing a lot more consistent. We’re playing good defense. We’re getting good hitting. We’re healthy now on the mound. Early in the season, we had some guys tender, and we had some position players out as well. They’re healed up now and they’re good. We’re just playing a little bit better baseball. They’re confident and healthy.“

Toman on Keegan Linza, who is 8-0 but leads the pitching staff with 33 walks:

“Keegan is throwing better. He got the win against George Mason last week and threw a good bullpen yesterday. He’s 8-0 and has had a great year, but he kind of hit a wall a couple of weeks ago. And that happens during the course of a long season. But he threw a good bullpen yesterday, so it’s encouraging to see him coming along.“

Toman on Coastal:

“What happened with Coastal was that they were really good last year, and they had four juniors—the coach’s son, Chance Gilmore, the Rice kid at first base, the catcher and the third baseman—all four of them were draftable guys. A couple of them had injuries. A couple of them didn’t have the year they wanted and they went undrafted. And they got them back as seniors. When you have four players like that, seniors, a nucleus that have been in the regionals, they’ve been in the super regionals ...“

** Coastal has three players with double-digit home-run totals—catcher Jose Iglesias has 13, and Chance Gilmore and Daniel Bowman each have 10. The Chanticleers also have two players with 40-plus stolen bases—Rico Noel has 44 and Scott Woodward has 43.

It’s a heck of a speed-power blend. Liberty pitcher Shawn Teufel on how to defend it:

“They’ve got the running game. They’ve got the power. So we’ll see what we can do as a pitching staff to try to limit them with their stolen bases and hitting the ball hard. ... As a pitching staff, we have to try to keep the running game down. That’s where they like to manufacture runs and get ahead quick and put you away.“

** Teufel on his arm strength, and how he’s held up through the grind of the season:

“It feels fine, yeah. It’s been good. I’ve been going just over 100 (pitches) my last three starts. Not trying to push it too far into the pitch count. They always keep an eye on that.“

** Liberty’s Tyler Bream on the series:

“I am so ready to do this. I think the whole team is really excited. We’ve put ourselves in a great position. This are three big games for us to kind of solidify the regional picture.“