Recapping Day 1 of Division 3 baseball championships
There were a few Cinderellas at the tournament and they pretty much all lost
I know most of you were champing at the bit to find out what happened on the first day of the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship (called the Division III College World Series in some places, but the NCAA doesn’t seem to use that term, reserving that for the Division I baseball tournament in Omaha and the softball tournament in Oklahoma City).
The tournament got underway in its home for the next three years, Eastlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland at Classic Park home of the minor league Lake County Captains, an A level team for the Cleveland Guardians. Judging by the crowds I saw on the NCAA.com feed of the game, there may not be a big groundswell of fan support for this event. None of the eight teams playing are from Ohio and it seems like a bit of a road trip for fans of any of the schools.
Action was supposed to start at 7 am Pacific Time with fourth seeded Pomona-Pitzer playing fifth seed Misericordia. The start was delayed due to “field maintenance.” Which was fine by me since I had to drive to work and it’s not exactly easy to track down any other source of Division III college baseball while I’m driving. Unsurprisingly, the internet was not spoiling this for me.
Misericordia took a quick 1-0 lead in the first, expanded it to 2-0 before Pomona-Pitzer scored three times in the fifth to take a 3-2 lead. But, that lead would not last long.
In the top of the sixth, Pomona starting pitcher Jake Hilton got a strikeout to start the inning when a Misericordia batter leaned into a pitch in the strike zone and got hit by it.1 The pitch being a strike overrules a hit batter. But, Hilton couldn’t find the strike zone after that, issuing back to back walks and then an RBI single as Misericordia tied it up. Hilton hit another batter (for real this time) and the bases were loaded.
Pomona brought in closer Eric Prough. He struck out the first batter he faced on three pitchers. But, he hit the next one with a 1-2 pitch to force in the go-ahead run. Misericordia tacked on two more runs in the 9th and its closer, Matt Lanzendorfer, pitched three innings to get the save.
The next game matched up eight seed and defending champ Lynchburg against the top seeded Gulls of Endicott University (Beverly, Massachusetts). Endicott had won 23 in a row since losing to Roger Williams, but they were overmatched by the Hornets.
Lynchburg scored four times in the second inning (on just two hits and one big error and a lot of bad pitching) and were never challenged in a 7-2 win. Endicott, like a lot of highly regarded teams from New England in college baseball, was not up to the task. 2
In tomorrow morning’s elimination game, Pomona-Pitzer will play Endicott. That will be followed by a winner’s bracket game between Misericordia and Lynchburg.
The other half of the bracket started off with a game between a school that actually no longer exists as of this moment, Birmingham-Southern, and Salve Regina University, a school on the mean streets of Newport, Rhode Island not far from a Vanderbilt family mansion.
Birmingham-Southern closed for good on May 31, but the baseball team got to keep playing. There looked to be about 100 or so fans who made the trip from Alabama to watch the Panthers see if they could bring home an NCAA title to … no one.
The Panthers wear jerseys that read “SOUTHERN”, which is a choice. Birmingham-Southern started Drake LaRoche, son of former big leaguer Adam LaRoche. It was not a case of having to love the Drake. He was hit hard by Salve Regina, giving up seven runs in five innings. Birmingham-Southern rallied to make it 7-5 and had the tying runs on base in the eighth and ninth, but it wasn’t enough. The Panthers need to win Saturday in an elimination game or else the school gets memory-holed all together.
The final game of the day was between six seed Randolph-Macon (the Yellow Jackets) against Wisconsin-Whitewater (the Warhawks), which the NCAA website would abbreviate as UWWW.
The Yellow Jackets scored three times in the top of the first, but UWWW matched that in the bottom half. And then Randolph-Macon stopped scoring while Whitewater did not. The final was 11-3 in favor of the Warhawks (their mascot does not look like Donald Rumsfeld or Robert McNamara.)
So tomorrow’s other elimination game will match up Birmingham-Southern versus Randolph-Macon. Salve Regina will play Wisconsin-Whitewater in a winner’a bracket game to finish off the day.
How was I able to follow this? The NCAA does stream a broadcast of the games on its website. It’s not overly fancy with just a handful of cameras and no replays or slow motion or anything of the sort. There are two guys announcing the game who hang out there at the stadium all day. They don’t appear to have been given too many pronunciation guides to player names, so they make educated guesses. And they seem to be Googling answers to questions about the teams playing before them.
College baseball championship series pretty much all come down to which team has enough competent pitching to carry the team through the rapid series of games. Teams that lose the first game are at a decided disadvantage, having to win four straight games to advance, while teams that win the opener can move on with just two more wins. Coaches tend to go all in to win the opening game.
Pomona lost its opening game of the postseason to Willamette, but then won three straight to move on to a super regional, which they swept in two games. UWWW lost its opener to UW-Lacrosse, but then won two games in one day to move on to Eastlake. So first game losers do advance. It’s just not a lot of fun. The winners of the two winner’s bracket games tomorrow get a precious day off before playing again on Monday. And then they would have to lose twice in one day to be eliminated.
By the time most of you read this, it’s likely that either the Pomona-Pitzer or Endicott team is headed to the Cleveland Airport to head home, with neither team getting the chance to get the full experience of suburban Cleveland.
College batters at all levels like to lean into pitches and the umpires frequently call the batters out when they see it or disallow the free base.
Although to be fair, Eastern Connecticut State has won this tournament on more than one occasion.
Reading this I feel like I was almost there.