Knights near Conference USA play

A wild win for the Knights closed out a four-game series on the diamond with a bang against Columbia on Monday. The 5-1 win gave the Knights three of the four games, and the series catapulted their record up to 14-8.

And the Knights owe much of that to pitcher Eric Skoglund, who pitched eight shutout innings to keep the Lions (2-9) out of the scoring box.

Most of the Knights’ runs came off of small ball plays and a combination of walks, wild pitches and errors on the part of the Lions. The Knights only needed three hits to score their five runs.

The win added to a big weekend for the Knights, who smashed Columbia by a total run margin of 25-10 in four games.

The Knights were looking to keep up that momentum Wednesday against Jacksonville, on the verge of starting a long streak of Conference USA games in their final season in the conference.

They take off for Birmingham this weekend to face UAB, part of an unusually strong C-USA lineup this season. The Blazers are near the bottom of the conference in overall record, at 9-11. None of the teams have played a conference foe yet.

The Knights will be looking for revenge in their first meeting with UAB since last year’s C-USA championships, when UCF lost 15-1 in a mercy rule game that was cut short in the seventh inning. The losing pitcher in that game, Skoglund, may have a shot at redemption in this weekend’s three game series, which starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

After that series the Knights will return home to battle old foe Southern Miss in a three game series starting at 6:30 p.m. March 28. The Golden Eagles are 8-11 so far this season. It’s been nearly a year since their bizarre series against the Knights last season that opened with a 14-inning scoreless stalemate that the Knights would eventually lose with one swing of the bat. The next two games they throttled the Eagles by a combined score of 23-9.