BELOIT — While Beloit College’s baseball team entered last weekend’s Midwest Conference Tournament as a third-seed, the fact the Buccaneers came away champions shouldn’t paint them as a Cinderella team.
Far from it.
“We felt the entire season that we had the DNA of a championship team, but for whatever reason the chromosomes weren’t in the right places,” Beloit head coach Dave DeGeorge said. “It took a while to put that together.”
The Bucs (24-15) were the hottest team in Appleton. They went 3-0 and captured their second straight MWC Tourney title and the automatic NCAA Division III Tournament berth that comes with it. The Bucs defeated second-seeded University of Chicago 10-1 and top-seeded Lawrence 9-6 on Friday. Saturday, they held off the Maroons 2-1.
Their reward is a 7-hour bus trip to Lexington, Kentucky, where they will play No. 1 seed Spalding (30-10) at 1:30 p.m. CST Friday in the Transylvania Regional. In the first game, No. 2 seeded Transylvania (32-12) plays No. 3 Birmingham-Southern (26-14) at 10 a.m.
The tournament is over three days.
DeGeorge said his team’s performance in Appleton had a lot to do with having a week to prepare.
“The way the (regular-season) schedule goes we don’t have a lot of practices and when we do have a practice it’s a day before a game and you’re not going to go super hard or make many changes,” the coach said. “We had a full week of practice and we were able to fully evaluate what had happened with the season and things we might need to be ready to do in the tournament.”
DeGeorge tinkered with the batting order, moving slugger Brett Kiger into the three hole and moving Matt O’Leary behind him.
“The thought was that teams are going to think twice about throwing breaking ball after breaking ball to Kiger because now if they walk him they have to face O’Leary,” DeGeorge said. “That seemed to help us.”
The Bucs also focused in practice on situational hitting — bunting and hit-and-runs.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about what we were going to ask certain players to do,” DeGeorge said. “We worked with certain players on bunting. We worked with certain players on hit-and-runs. We executed two (hit-and-runs) that were huge momentum swings for us in the first two games on Friday. Fortunately, we were ready for that.”
The Bucs were also able to go with the outfield lineup DeGeorge preferred, with Nolan Tomsyck having recovered from a hamstring injury.
“Nolan is the heir apparent at shortstop, but he’s a really good player and we needed to get him in the lineup so we hoped to have him in right,” DeGeorge said. “Then he hurt his hamstring and we couldn’t play him in the outfield. But now he’s healed and ready to go. He played really well there in the tournament.”
DeGeorge isn’t afraid to use his bench, either, as pinch-hitters or defensive replacements.
“At catcher we’re using a three-headed monster and we’re using some pinch-hitters,” he said. “We learned about our team during the season and made some good decisions about how to allocate people that put us in a good position as far as the tournament.”
Center fielder Jack Alport has been the catalyst for the Bucs lately, leading them with a .352 batting average, 44 runs and 13 doubles. He also has five homers, 36 RBI and 14 stolen bases. Shortstop O’Leary is hitting .347 with 43 runs, 10 doubles, seven homers, 26 RBIs and 15 steals. Kiger has a whopping 18 home runs and is hitting .333 with 36 runs and 55 RBI. The Bucs, hitting .292 as a team, also have Miles Souza (.305), Tomsyck (.302), Seth Brankey (.300), Connor Vogel (.298) and Evan Zenger (.285).
As is usually the case, the weekend success also came down to pitching. The Bucs got solid starts from Aiden Phipps (8-3, 4.03 ERRA0 and Ben Schweit (5-1, 3.67) on Friday and then got a great effort-by-committee in the title game. Eumon Burke started and allowed one run in 4 1-3 innings. Relievers Tommy Murray, Caleb Lasher and Harvey Pena didn’t allow a run.
TRANSYLVANIA BATS? DeGeorge admits he needed Google search to find just where Transylvania University is located. He just had a pretty good idea it would be under 500 miles from Beloit.
“That’s the threshold for the NCAA having to fly you to play,” DeGeorge said. “Transylvania (in Lexington, Kentucky) turned out to be around 468 miles.”
Beloit has played in regionals in Oshkosh and La Crosse in the past, but last year was sent to Denison, Ohio. DeGeorge hoped for a more fan friendly locale this time around geographically.
Instead, he got Lexington. To make it just a little more difficult to swallow, Centre College of Kentucky will play in the regional UW-Whitewater is hosting.
“I understand the NCAA wants to make the regionals as balanced as possible,” DeGeorge said. “They don’t want three of the best teams in the country in the same regional. But the people who get involved with these decisions are always from the places where they are actually thinking about winning the national championship. They clearly want the best eight teams to make the World Series.
“I think they should pay more attention to geography and give student fans and families the opportunity to go to games. We have been in regionals in Oshkosh and La Crosse where we made a tidy little profit. Last year, NCAA did not even cover 100 percent of our expenses.”
As for their opening opponent, the Bucs played Spalding a year ago in the regional and lost 4-3 in extra innings.
“We think we know Spalding fairly well,” he said. “We think our position players will match up evenly with them. Their pitching staff is lights out. So we are going to have to pitch great, play great defense and scratch and claw to get some runs. We’ll do everything we can to move guys and hopefully some of our big guns like Kiger (Connor) Vogel and O’Leary get one and let it fly.”
Spalding ace Caden Krystofiak, went 6-0 during the regular season with a 2.15 ERA. In 62 2-3 innings, he struck out 83. Wesley Clark went 4-1 and had 41 strikeouts in 40 innings. Opponents hit .169 off him. Cameron Rayborn posted a 3.02 ERA and in 65 2-3 innings, he struck out 68.
A trio leads the Spalding attack. Shortstop Ethan Tuttle batted .438 during the regular season with a .615 slugging percent. He also stole 21 bases. Catcher Hunter Strong has 22 career home runs and this season has hit .408 with a .505 on-base percentage and .714 slugging percent. He has driven in 45 runs. Left fielder Jacob Spanyer is hitting .349 with a .543 slugging percent and .441 on-base percentage.
• SPEAKING OF THE WIAC: UW-La Crosse (31-13) claimed one of 19 at-large bids into the 60-team D-III field while UW-Whitewater (35-8) secured an automatic spot after winning the WIAC Tournament. Both will host regional action.
UW-La Crosse will open against Bethel University (Minn.) (23-14). The regional will also include Benedictine University (Ill.) (32-12) and Coe College (Iowa) (29-14).
UW-Whitewater will face Crown College (Minn.) (21-20) in its first game. Centre College (Ky.) (34-11) and California Lutheran University (25-13) will also participate in the regional.
All regionals are double-elimination and will be conducted May 17-19, with the winners of the 16 regionals qualifying for super regionals May 24-25. The eight super regional winners will advance to the pool play double-elimination championship at Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake, Ohio, May 31-June 6.
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