Patriots, Cougars Remain Unbeaten In NCAA Finals

The University of Texas at Tyler and Concordia University Chicago emerged Saturday as the two unbeaten teams after the second day of the 2018 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship.

Texas-Tyler and Concordia Chicago will await the winners of two elimination games on Sunday and face those squads later in the day.

Randolph-Macon College (Va.) takes on Misericordia University (Pa.) in an elimination game on Sunday at 10 a.m. Swarthmore College (Pa.) then faces Texas Lutheran University at 1:15 p.m. in another elimination game. Texas-Tyler plays the winner of the Randolph-Macon/Misericordia game at 4:30 p.m., and Concordia Chicago faces the winner of Texas Lutheran/Swarthmore in the 7:45 p.m. game.

Should Texas-Tyler and Concordia Chicago both win on Sunday, they would meet for the national title in a best-of-three series starting on Monday.

Texas-Tyler (37-17) scored six times in the first four innings and went on to a 7-3 victory over Misericordia (36-14). The Patriots scored six times in the first four innings and rode the pitching of Ryan Cheatham for the victory. Cheatam went 8.1 innings, allowed eight hits, struck out one and walked six to claim the victory.

Henry Sanchez went 3-for-3 with a double and drove in a run for Texas-Tyler. Blake Maddox and Jared Pauley both had two hits, and Pauley drove in a pair of runs for the Patriots.

Concordia Chicago (40-13) broke its game with Texas Lutheran (39-10) open with a four-run third inning and went on to an 8-3 victory.

Joe Silva, Bryan VanDuser, Andrew Massey and Kevin Coppin all had two hits for the Cougars, and Silva drove in a pair of runs.

Concordia Chicago also got a strong pitching performance from Keaton Connor, who allowed three hits and three runs over six innings to pick up the win. Connor struck out five and walked four. Mike Formella tossed three innings of one-hit ball to earn his 15th save of the season.

Randolph-Macon (36-8-1) jumped on the State University of New York at Oswego early in their elimination game and went on to an 11-4 victory in the opening game of the day. Oswego was eliminated and finished with the season with a 30-14 record.

The Yellowjackets collected 18 hits, and Jeff Butler went 5-for-6 with a pair of doubles, scored four runs and drove in a pair. Cole Migliorini and Joseph Tuzzolo both had three hits for Randolph-Macon.

Nick Roth allowed 10 hits over seven innings, struck out five and didn't walk a batter to earn the victory.

Swarthmore (38-10) rode the complete-game performance of pitcher Sawyer Lake en route to a 10-5 victory over the College of Wooster (Ohio). Lake allowed nine hits, struck out three and walked three to improve to 6-1 on the season.

The Garnet scored three times in the first to take early control and then had a critical three-run outburst in the fifth to seize the momentum. Wooster, which was eliminated with the loss, had cut the lead to 4-3 in the top of the fifth before Swarthmore struck for three in the bottom half of the inning to push the lead back to 7-3.

Jackson Roberts went 4-for-5 with a home run, four runs batted in and three runs scored to pace Swarthmore's 14-hit attack. Cole Beeker also went 4-for-5 and scored three runs for the Garnet.

Jared Gillen and Conor Elliott both had a pair of hits, and Gillen drove in three runs while Elliott collected two RBI.

2018 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship • Host Website

Photo courtesy of Steve Frommell, D3Photopgraphy.com