MACON, Ga. – The Mercer baseball team looks to continue its fast start when it travels to Tampa for a three-game series against Big East member South Florida at Red McEwen Field.

The Bears take on the Bulls in game one of the series on Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. Game two is scheduled for Saturday evening at 7 p.m. and the series finale will be on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.

The Orange and Black have come out of the gates hard to start the 2010 season. Mercer has won nine of its last 10 games, and enter play this weekend with a 13-5 overall record. The Bears 13-5 start is the team's best start over their first 18 games since 2001, when they went 14-4.

"We are very excited about the opportunity to play a team as talented South Florida," head coach Craig Gibson said. "This is a great step for our program playing against a Big East team and we hope this series will help us prepare for future games against Georgia Tech and FGCU."

USF enters this weekend's action with a 5-12 overall record after a brutal stretch of games to start the season. The Bulls have already played seven games against ranked teams such as Florida, Miami, Ohio State and Oklahoma.

The Bulls were picked to finish second in the 2010 Big East Preseason Coaches' poll and return 24 letterwinners from a squad that finished 34-25 last season. 2010 All Big East selection Junior Carlin leads the USF offensive attack with a .319 batting average and 23 hits.

Friday evening's game marks the first all-time meeting between Mercer and USF. The Bears have a 4-3 record all-time against current Big East schools, with all of those meetings coming against West Virginia.