The questioning. The pleading. The praising. The butt-chewing.

With the most important series of the regular season upon him, Hudak's got a new one on deck.

Nothing.

"If I have to say something to motivate them, then we're in trouble," he said two days before Winthrop was to head to UNC Asheville for its final series. "They know what we're facing; they've known for a while.

"They don't need any words from me to know what they have to do."

The Eagles (22-31, 9-9 Big South Conference) must win two games -- or win once and have High Point lose once to Liberty -- to clinch a top-four seed for next week's Big South tournament. A top-four seed guarantees a free pass out of the first-round play-in games, where it's lose-and-go-home instead of the usual double-elimination format.

With some major help from other teams -- High Point sweeping Liberty, VMI losing twice to Charleston Southern or getting swept, plus the Eagles going 3-0 against the Bulldogs -- Winthrop could finish as high as second, thus extending its run of first or second-place finishes to four straight seasons.

But the main goal is just to win two and lock up fourth.

"We've played, what, 50-something games this season?" wondered co-captain Eddie Tisdale. "We shouldn't need a pep talk at this point. We just want to play well this weekend and head to the tournament next week on a roll."

Tisdale and fellow co-captain Billy Froehlich said there were no plans for any extra meetings or speeches on their end. They said the Eagles have known for the past three weeks what the situation was, so there's no use harping on it.

It's already been stressed too many times.

"We've just been saying we need to have a turnaround from what we've done earlier," Froehlich said. "We've been kind of playing to our competition."

That's been fine when the Eagles have played Georgia or North Carolina. But they've also done it against Charleston Southern and Radford, two BSC also-rans until they played Winthrop.

That's been the most troubling aspect of the year. The Eagles lost a 2-1 series to Coastal Carolina, but they played very well. They also beat second-place Liberty, third-place VMI and fifth-place High Point in two of three games.

But playing CSU and Radford, Winthrop mysteriously vanished and lost two of three in each series. And now the Eagles are taking on another low seed, UNC Asheville (22-31, 5-13), all by itself in the BSC basement.

"Obviously, if I had an answer to it, it wouldn't be happening," Hudak said. "For whatever reason, we just haven't shown up against some of those lower teams."

The Bulldogs have suffered through a year where they've been a tough team to figure out. One constant has been the pitching of Alan DeRatt, who leads the nation with a 1.25 ERA.

Considering UNCA is already locked into the play-in games and would naturally want to throw its best pitcher in order to stay alive, it's possible DeRatt will pitch sparingly this weekend. He shouldn't be the biggest problem, since the Eagles have shown they can hit hard-throwers, while junkballers have eaten Winthrop alive.

Overcoming their own foibles is the Eagles' largest task. The Bulldogs can force the Eagles into the play-in round with them. They're going to be playing with nothing to lose, and Winthrop has to take a similar but tweaked approach.

As in, the only way the Eagles are going to make the NCAA tournament is by winning the Big South tournament. Might as well make it as easy as possible.

"In a way, we control our own destiny," Tisdale said. "They can take us out or we can take care of our business."