ELON, N.C. -- The fourth-seeded Elon Phoenix will get its 2010 Southern Conference Tournament underway with a 9 p.m. contest against the fifth-seeded Samford Bulldogs on Wednesday night from Riley Park in Charleston, S.C.  It will be the fourth meeting in a week for Elon and Samford which concluded the regular season with a three-game set at Elon.  The Phoenix won two of the three games of that series.  All of Elon's games can be heard live on WPCM 920 AM.

 

Elon is 15-10 all-time in the Southern Conference Tournament and has advanced to the title game in each of the past two seasons.  The Phoenix owns one tournament title, winning the event in 2008 - the last time it was held in Charleston.  In tourney play against the teams in the field, Elon has gone 2-0 vs. Appalachian State, 1-2 vs. College of Charleston, 2-5 vs. The Citadel, 1-1 vs. Furman, 3-1 vs. Georgia Southern, 0-0 vs. Samford and 1-1 vs. Western Carolina.

 

• If Elon should advance to the tournament final, it would mark the first time that the same team has appeared in three consecutive tournament finals since The Citadel did so from 1994-96.

 

• This year, Elon pitchers have thrown 8,473 pitches.  Of those, 5,199 have been strikes.  That amounts to 61.4 percent of the pitches being thrown for strikes.

 

• Elon has scored 456 runs this season.  The Phoenix has scored 175 of its runs from the seventh inning on.  That amounts to 38.4 percent of its runs being scored in the late innings. 

 

• In the final series of the season, Mike Melillo became Elon's all-time home run king as he hit his 38th career dinger in game two against Samford.  He hit number 39 in the finale.

 

• Elon's pitching staff sports two nine-game winners (Jimmy Reyes and Ken Ferrer) for the first time since the move to NCAA Division I play for the 2000 season.