BOONE, N.C. – App State Baseball will head to Durham on Tuesday for the team's first midweek contest of the season against Duke. First pitch is set for 4 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on the ACC Network Extra. The Mountaineers are 3-0 to begin a season for the first time since winning seven straight games to open the 2023 campaign.
SCOUTING THE MOUNTAINEERS
App State opened its season with a weekend sweep over Canisius, outscoring the Golden Griffins 26-10 across the three-game series.
Kameron Miller led the offense with a pair of doubles as part of a 4-for-10 effort at the plate, while
Gage Peterson stuck out eight to earn the win in game two of the series to highlight the work on the mound. Miller and second baseman
Joseph Zamora were both selected to the Preseason All-Sun Belt team this season. App State has reached the Sun Belt tournament in five straight seasons, including a pair of 30-win campaigns in 2023 and 2024. Last season the offense ranked third in the league in batting average a season ago, trailing only NCAA tournament teams Coastal Carolina and Southern Miss.
SCOUTING THE BLUE DEVILS
Duke opened its season by going 3-1 against Maine across a four-game series to open the year, outscoring the Black Bears 21-8. Offensively Duke was led by Cider Canon's five hits and three RBIs, while on the mound Ben Dean fanned nine batters across five scoreless innings to earn a victory on Saturday. The Blue Devils posted a 41-win season in 2025, winning the Athens Regional before being upset by Murray State in the Durham Super Regional. The Blue Devils are led by first year head coach Corey Muscara, who previously served as the pitching coach at Wake Forest. They were picked 13
th out of 17 teams in the ACC Preseason poll.
SERIES HISTORY
App State and Duke will meet for the 13th time on the diamond on Tuesday. The two teams have met in each of the past four seasons, with Duke winning each of the matchups, although three of the four were decided by five runs or fewer. Last year the Mountaineers fell 8-4 as the team was unable to limit damage in a seven-run third inning for the Blue Devils. Tuesday's matchup will mark the first time that a
Kermit Smith led Mountaineer team will not face a Chris Pollard led Duke team, after Pollard left to become the head coach of Virginia following the 2025 season. Pollard was Smith's college coach at Pfeiffer University and later coached App State from 2005 through 2012.
IT'S MILLER TIME
The conference's first team designated hitter last season,
Kameron Miller enters his junior campaign as one of the most complete hitters in the Sun Belt. Miller slashed .305/.461/.567 with seven doubles, 12 home runs and 50 RBIs in 47 starts for the Mountaineers. He reached base safely in 37 of his final 40 games of the season, which included an 11-game hitting streak during that span.
The Harrisburg, N.C., native finished the year ranked among the Sun Belt leaders in on-base percentage, OPS, walks and RBIs. After not drawing a single walk as a freshman, Miller developed a much more patient approach as a sophomore, drawing 41 walks on the season, including 27 free passes in 30 conference games, tied for the second-most in the league. Miller also set the program record for the longest home run in the TrackMan Era (since 2019) when he belted a 471-foot shot against Western Carolina on April 8. Miller opened the season by going 4-for-10 with a pair of doubles and seven RBIs across the first weekend of the season.
SOME ZA DELIVERY
Graduate second baseman
Joseph Zamora has been a model of consistency in his first two seasons at App State. In 2025, the second baseman slashed .307/.397/.395 with 34 RBIs and 41 runs scored in 52 starts. The Miami, Fla., native had a flair for the dramatic in 2025. He blasted a grand slam as part of a seven-run fifth inning to help the Mountaineers overcome a six-run deficit in a win over UMass Lowell on Feb. 23, while also delivering a walk-off single in the 11th inning against Texas State on March 15 to help the Mountaineers sweep their opening series of Sun Belt play.
Zamora was also exceptional in the field, helping the Mountaineers turn 21 double plays and finishing the season with a fielding percentage of .969. Among his litany of web gems was a diving catch in foul territory at Marshall on April 11 that landed him the No. 2 spot on SportsCenter's Top 10 plays countdown. Zamora went 2-for-8 opening weekend and scored four runs for App State.
NATIONAL RECOGNITION
Four App State Baseball players have garnered national recognition heading into the 2026 season.
Nico Soul was projected to be the No. 1 impact freshman in the Sun Belt,
Gage Peterson (31) and
Carter Stanford (48) were both projected as top 50 draft prospects within the conference, while
Tanner Nolan was ranked as the 153rd best starting pitcher across Division I baseball.
BASE THIEFS
App State was very aggressive opening weekend, stealing seven bases in eight tries against Canisius. The Mountaineers' offense has not been predicated on base stealing in recent years as the team went 35-for-48 across 54 games last season. Under
Kermit Smith, the Mountaineers most aggressive running seasons have been their winningest seasons as the team stole 73 bases in 2023 (30 wins) and 71 bases in 2024 (33 wins). App State is on pace to steal 126 bases this year. App State has stolen over 100 bases in a season just three times in program history.
GAS FROM GAGE
Right-handed pitcher
Gage Peterson impressed in his first start of the season for the Mountaineers. The JuCo transfer from Walters State gave up just one unearned run in four innings while striking out eight in game one of Saturday's doubleheader to earn the win against Canisius. Peterson posted an 11.98 K/9 across two seasons at the junior college level. He was one of three pitchers in the Sun Belt to strike out eight or more during the first weekend of play.
STRONG STABLE
App State's bullpen impressed in the opening weekend of play.
Nick DiRito struck out six in four innings of work, while
Max Tramontana and
JJ Garcia each struck out four across two scoreless innings.
Ethan Wilson and
Jordan Fisher each earned a save with a scoreless outing.
LEATHERMEN
Playing clean defense has been a staple of App State's success under head coach
Kermit Smith. Led by infield coach
Britt Johnson, App State has ranked among the top half of the Sun Belt in fielding percentage in four of the past five seasons, while six of the top 10 fielding percentage teams in program history have come during Smith's tenure. In conference play last season, the Mountaineers ranked second in the league in fielding percentage (.979) and posted 20 error-free games on the season overall, including seven straight to end the regular season.
APP STATE IN THE DRAFT
Following the 2025 season, App State pitchers
Jackson Steensma and
Liam Best were selected in the Major League Baseball first year player's draft. Steensma was taken by the Seattle Mariners in the 14
th round, while Best was nabbed by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 19
th round. In nine seasons under head coach
Kermit Smith, eight Mountaineers have been selected in the MLB Draft, including four in the last three years (Xander Hamilton – MIN, 2023, Austin St. Laurent – SEA, 2024).
NEW-LOOK COACHING STAFF
App State Baseball features two new additions to its coaching staff in 2026. The Mountaineers announced the hire of pitching coach
Heath Blackmon in June. A rising star in college baseball, Blackmon recently concluded a four-year stint as the Director of Player Development for East Carolina, where he helped guide the Pirates to four NCAA tournament appearances and helped develop 2024 All-American Trey Yesavage, who starred for the Blue Jays in the 2025 World Series.
Seth McLemore also returns to the staff following one season as the hitting coach and recruiting coordinator at Southern Illinois. McLemore helped lead the Mountaineers to back-to-back 30-win seasons in 2023 and 2024 when the team broke the season home run record each year. McLemore replaced
Ross Steadley who was hired as the catching coordinator for the Chicago White Sox. Steedley joined
Ricky Meinhold, who was hired as the Toronto Blue Jays pitching coordinator in 2024, as App State assistants to be hired by Major League Baseball organizations.
SUPERB SUN BELT
The Sun Belt continues to be one of the top conferences in college baseball. Coastal Carolina was the College World Series runner-up a season ago, falling to LSU. Southern Miss joined the Chanticleers in hosting a regional. The league sent four teams to regionals in 2022 through 2024 and has done so six times since 2000. Coastal Carolina (6
th) and Southern Miss (20
th) are both ranked in the D1Baseball preseason poll, while Troy is also receiving votes in two other publications.
UP NEXT
The Mountaineers will play in a multi-team weekend series next weekend. The Mountaineers will play at Queens on Friday, host North Carolina A&T in Hickory on Saturday and then welcome Southern Illinois to Boone for the home opener on Sunday.
