No. 5 ETSU faces No. 4 Furman Wednesday morning at Fluor Field in Greenville

GREENVILLE, S.C. (May 22, 2016) – With the Southern Conference baseball regular season coming to an end on Saturday evening, the conference tournament bracket is now set. The SoCon Championship will be held May 24-29 at Fluor Field in Greenville, S.C.

All nine SoCon teams will participate in the tournament, with seeds 8 and 9 participating in a single-elimination game on Tuesday, May 24, for the right to advance to the double-elimination portion of the bracket. The championship game will take place Sunday, May 29, at 1 p.m., with a second game, if necessary, to begin 60 minutes after the completion of the first contest.

The tournament winner earns the league’s automatic bid to an NCAA Baseball Regional.

ETSU, who wrapped up the season winning 10 of its last 12 conference games, earned the No. 5 seed after finishing 26-28 overall, 13-11 in conference play. The Bucs take on No. 4 seed Furman (27-28, 14-10) on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. The Paladins ended the season with four straight series wins and are the highest seed since being the 3 seed in 2008.

ETSU and Furman have met 81 times with the Paladins holding a slight 41-40 advantage. The Bucs took two of three from Furman this season in Johnson City, while the Blue and Gold have won three of the five conference tournament meetings against the Paladins. Ironically, ETSU’s last SoCon tournament win was an 8-2 victory over Furman in 2001.

The winner of ETSU-Furman will play Thursday at 4 p.m., while the losing team plays an elimination game on Thursday morning at 9 a.m. The other teams on ETSU’s side of the bracket are top-seeded Mercer and No. 8 The Citadel and No. 9 VMI. Mercer, the regular season champion, gets the winner of the play-in game which features The Citadel and VMI.

The other part of the bracket features No. 2 Western Carolina versus No. 7 Wofford (Wednesday at 4 p.m.) and No. 3 UNCG against No. 6 Samford (Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.). The winners of those two games play Thursday at 7:30 p.m., while the two losing teams square off in an elimination game Thursday at 12:30 p.m.

Click here for more information on the 2016 SoCon Championship.

The tournament will be video streamed live on the SoCon Digital Network, while Sunday’s championship will be broadcast live on ESPN3.

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