web Charlotte

June 22, 2009

Charlotte, N.C. - The Charlotte 49ers baseball squad continued their wave of momentum in 2009. The Niners finished with a record of 33-22, a winning percentage of exactly 60 percent. The Niners have now won 30 or more games in five straight seasons and 20 or more home games in four straight years, both program records. Charlotte is only one of two teams to earn a berth in the conference tournament in the last four seasons. The Atlantic 10 Conference, 14 teams strong, only takes six to the league's postseason tournament. Charlotte is the only team to win two titles (2007 & 2008) in the previous four seasons, and only the second team in league history to win back-to-back titles.

Charlotte is the only team out of the Atlantic 10 to have winning percentages of better than 70 percent overall and in league play. Since joining the league in 2006, Charlotte is 160-68 (.702) overall, with a 76-32 (.704) league record.

Charlotte also has a 7-4 record in the league's postseason tournament. The Niners have finished either first, third or fourth out of 14 in each year in the league.

Nationally, Charlotte is one of only 20 programs to finish in the Top 75 for winning percentage in the nation in each of the last four years.

Charlotte was also among the Top 10 percent (31 programs in the country total) honored by the NCAA for outstanding academic progress. The NCAA honored teams that earned multi-year Academic Progress Rate, or APR, scores in the top 10 percent of all squads in their respective sports.

The APR provides a real-time look at a team's academic success each semester by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete. The APR includes both retention at an institution and academic eligibility in its calculation and provides a clear picture of the academic culture in each sport.

The most recent APR scores are multi-year rates based on the scores from the 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years.

Charlotte was one of only three programs that boast a Top 10% APR number and a Top 10 winning percentage in college baseball in the past three seasons. Charlotte baseball's current team cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) is 2.94 at the end of the fall semester of 2008.

This year, Charlotte was second in the conference in batting average and first in earned run average, with a league-low 4.61 team ERA. Last season, the Niners led the conference in batting, and were third in ERA. Charlotte has led the league in either hitting or ERA or both in each of its four seasons as an Atlantic 10 member.

As a team, Charlotte also led the league in RBI (430) and runs scored (470). The Niners drew 293 walks, most in the conference and hit a league-high 35 sacrifice flies. The team tied for the league lead with a .414 on-base percentage. On the mound, Charlotte walked 169 opposing hitters, the lowest total in the conference.

Charlotte boasted a few individual conference statistical champions in 2009. Sophomore Ryan Rivers belted a league-best 18 home runs, using four in the final weekend to become the home run champ. That total ties him with Tom Malchesky for the fourth-most homers in a single season in team history. He was one RBI shy of the league title in that category, driving in 65 runs during the season. Rivers also hit for the cycle in a conference game versus George Washington, the first player in a Charlotte uniform to accomplish that feat since 2006.

Junior Rob Lyerly, despite missing 12 games due to injury, was the only player in the conference with a slugging percentage over .700, and was nearly 50 points better than the second place finisher. His final .725 slugging percentage was the fourth-best in a season in school history, bumping his .705 mark from last season out of the top five. Lyerly finished tied for sixth with 12 home runs and was tied for ninth with 18 doubles to boost his slugging number this season. Lyerly was second in on-base percentage this season, at .493, just 11 points from the league-best number. Lyerly's .401 batting average for the season, just the eighth player in team history to finish at .400 or better, put him in a tie for third in conference overall.

A few school records were set this past season that merit mention in the end of year synopsis. In the career categories, third baseman Aaron Bray finished his final Charlotte season with 64 more hits, pushing past Bo Robinson to become the all-time hits leader. He concluded his career with 293 hits, four more than Robinson on the career chart. Bray also cracked the 200-run plateau, finishing with 212 career runs, four shy of the school mark held by Kevin Ayers. Bray and Ayers are the only two players in team history with 200 career hits and runs scored at Charlotte. Bray finished with a .347 career average, tying him for eighth on the career list at Charlotte. Bray is also found in the Top 10 in triples and stolen bases at the end of his Niners career.

Outfielder Justin Wilson broke a school record by recording a hit in ten consecutive at-bats in the early part of the season, in a week in which he hit .833 (10-for-13) and was named to the Diamond Sports National All-Star Lineup.

The team got off to a powerful start, with three players hitting home runs in their season-opening at-bat. Lyerly and infielder Michael Gyoerkoe both hit home runs in the season-opening series at Clemson, while outfielder Shane Brown did the improbable. In his first collegiate at-bat as a late-inning substitution, Brown lined a ball into the left center field gap with the bases loaded, and eventually scored an inside-the-park grand slam. He came up again in his second career game with the bases loaded and hit a two-RBI single. Brown finished his first week of college baseball with eight RBI on five hits in eight at bats.

The team reeled off 10 wins in a row (tied for the 11th-longest win streak in the nation this season) and was receiving votes for the third year in a row in a national poll. During that run, starting pitchers Joe Yermal and Patrick Lawson threw a pair of 88-pitch complete games versus Columbia University. Yermal finished the season with eight wins, as he did in his freshman campaign of 2008. He is two wins shy of getting into the Top 10 career wins list at Charlotte.

The Niners set a school record for margin of victory in a 31-1 win over North Carolina A&T on April 7. It was tied for the third-largest margin of victory in the country in 2009 and the 31 runs were tied for the fourth-most scored by a team.

Yermal's eight wins tied for the league lead with two other hurlers. His ERA was second-lowest and just ahead of the third lowest in teammate and reliever Kelly McLain. McLain, a redshirt junior appeared in 30 games for Charlotte, the second-most in the league this season and the third-most in team history for a season. McLain finished with the lowest opponents batting average against (.235) and was tied for fifth in saves (5) and ninth in wins (6), while seventh in the league in strikeouts. He has 55 appearances and 123 strikeouts, with seven saves in the better part of two seasons, all just outside of the career Top 10 lists in those categories at Charlotte.

At season's end, Charlotte had five players named to the All-Atlantic 10 lists. Rob Lyerly was the First-Team first baseman for the second straight year. Joe Yermal was named a Second-Team starting pitcher for the second-straight season as well. Newcomers to the All-Conference teams (all named Second-Team) were catcher Zane Williams, outfielder Justin Wilson and designated hitter Ryan Rivers. Lyerly and Rivers were named to the Academic All-Conference Team as well as to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District III team, with Rivers on the First Team and Lyerly making the Second-Team list.

Lyerly was the lone Charlotte player named to the 2009 Atlantic 10 All-Tournament team.

Following the season, Lyerly was selected in the sixth round by the New York Yankees and Bray was picked in the 27th round by the Houston Astros in the 2009 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. Lyerly was the highest player drafted from Charlotte since John Maine in the 2002 draft in the sixth round by Baltimore. Charlotte has had at least one player picked in the last four straight drafts, 10 total in that span.

This season was also the last season for assistant coach Bo Durkac. The Charlotte hitting instructor and defensive mentor resigned after seven years in Niner green to take the top assistant job at Illinois State to work for his former teammate Mark Kingston, who assumed the head coaching duties following the retirement of Jim Brownlee, who finished a 30-year career in 2009.