The Georgia Southern baseball team is mired — mired in a slump that few Eagle baseball fans are accustomed to.
    Their season unto this point has proven, if nothing else, that baseball is indeed a funny game.
    This is a team that opened the 2007 campaign 8-2 with wins over Hawaii and Georgia Tech and reeled off seven straight at one point. Visions of a regional (and maybe even Omaha) were most certainly dancing in da heads.
    But a late February trip to the dreaded state of Alabama — where GSU has traditionally struggled — turned a hopeful season into a baffling one.
    Southern has lost 16 of its last 26 and finds itself in second-to-last in the Southern Conference at 2-7. They’re fourth from the bottom in the league in batting average (.296) and slugging percentage (.436), and third from the bottom in on-base percentage (.386). The Eagles lead the league in strikeouts  with 248.
    What makes those numbers even more frustrating for the Clements Crazies is that GSU is near the top of the conference in most pitching categories: ERA (4.59, third), opposing batters are hitting .288 (third) and Eagle hurlers have struck out 242 men (third again).
    All those numbers were supposed to be flip-flopped. Everett Teaford and Dustin Evans were drafted out of the rotation and the Eagles were going to struggle to replace them. But Drew Murray, Brian Wilkerson and Aaron Eubanks have more than done their part to fill that void.
    An inexperienced offense in 2006 has grown a year older and was supposed to lay a beating on any and all competition. Names like Economos, Parker, Benedict, Miller and Shehan looked like murderers row on paper. That piece of paper was shredded a long time ago. Only shortstop Brian Pierce has shown any consistency in GSU’s starting nine.
    So what can remedy this tangled web of baseball at its cruelest? Line-up changes? Managerial ejections? Home run derby's in batting practice? A change in the 2 strikes-2 balls-2 outs voodoo? Done, done and already done.
    There’s no simple way to solve baseball’s riddles. But perhaps Southern’s fiery win over Elon Sunday afternoon has lit a spark which will carry over into tonight’s contest with North Florida. Eagles fans sure hope so, as time is running out on an already dangerously sub-par season.

      Chad Bishop can (and probably will) be reached at (912) 489-9408.