Niner Nuggets- Week 10

Charlotte finished the week 3-2, losing mid-weeks at UNC and against ECU, before sweeping UAB at the Hayes. The Niners have now won 7 straight C-USA games and sit in 3rd place with a record of 12-5 in conference. The overall record for the 49ers is 22-17. Charlotte will now start a 5 game road trip that starts at Winthrop and continues with a weekend at Western Kentucky.

Before we jump into rankings, standings, and RPI, we should acknowledge that Cam Hansen was named C-USA Pitcher of the Week this week after his stellar performance on Sunday in a 2-0 win over UAB. Hansen carried a no-hitter into the 9th vs the Blazers.

Charlotte has currently played the toughest schedule in Conference USA based on Strength of Schedule, where the Niners currently rank 30th in the country. The OOC SOS is at #4 in the country.
The RPI has CLT dropping a few spots to 56 this week as the Niners played UAB 3 times who was around 200 in the RPI. We use Warren Nolan as our source for RPI data and overall Conference USA is still rated 7th with a record of 124-98 out of conference. Conference USA now has only four teams in the RPI Top 100 (UTSA, DBU, CLT, FAU).

From C-USA, UTSA and Dallas Baptist are both now ranked in various polls. Here’s a look at the national rankings for our teams of interest this week:

D1 Baseball– 3 South Carolina; 6 Coastal Carolina; 12 ECU; 19 DBU; 25 UTSA
Baseball America– 2 South Carolina; 7 Coastal Carolina; 14 ECU; 19 DBU; 23 UTSA
USA Today Coaches Poll– 3 South Carolina; 7 CCU; 14 ECU; 20 DBU ; RV: UNC, UTSA

After a sweep this weekend, CLT finds themselves 2.5 games out of 1st place in C-USA with 12 games remaining. CLT, UTSA, & DBU are sitting in the Top 3. Then there is a large pack of teams that are within 3 games of each other, fighting for seeding in the tournament. At the bottom we have UAB and FIU, who are both 11 games out of 1st. They would be out of the conference tourney if the season ended today. Here are the standings heading into the last 4 weekends of conference play:

Charlotte is 10-12 out of conference against the nations’ 4th toughest Strength of Schedule. AS of now, there are only three non-conference games left: at Winthrop (112), at Coastal Carolina (6), and at South Carolina (1). There are still a few opportunities for an RPI bump. Here is how the 49ers OOC opponents have fared: