May 16, 2025

Regionals - Day One

More news about: Messiah | Methodist | UW-Oshkosh
 
Methodist earned the days first upset, shutting out Brockport for a 10-0 win in the opening game of the Randolph-Macon Regional. Kyle Molivas (pictured) spun a complete game three-hitter to give the Monach's the win. Messiah follwed this up with a 15-0 win over host Randolph-Macon. Zachary Harris dominated on the mound, throwing 7.2 scoreless innings, allowing on four hits, while striking out nine batters. On the offensive side, Jarrett Gordon tallied three doubles and six RBIs.
d3photography.com by Mike Atherton

 

Everyone of the 64 teams in the playoffs was scheduled to play on Friday and all did. Most favorites ended up winning except on the campus of Randolph Macon where both games were won by the lower seed. In fact six games of the 29 completed so far were won by the lower seed. At least one game never was finished with two games scheduled late. Rain pushed the Penn State Harrisburg-TCNJ game into Saturday with Lynchburg and Marymount playing late at night.

Three higher seeds needed a walk off win to advance to the winners bracket with Concordia (Texas), Washington University and Rutgers-Camden all completing the feat. Some teams had it easy with a big offensive day but none was bigger than UW-Oshkosh. The Titans lived up to their name with 34 runs in their game with Chicago.

Along with the bottom seeds in the Randolph-Macon Regional, McMurry also used an upset to advance on Friday. Opening the Regional round of the 2025 NCAA Championships at Ben Hines Field in La Verne, CA, McMurry defeated Pomona-Pitzer by a score of 8-7. McMurry's offense came alive in the top of the 3rd inning, scoring five runs to take a 6-1 lead. Pomona-Pitzer rallied, scoring two runs in the bottom of the 7th to make it 7-6, and would score another run to tie the game in the bottom of the 8th, 7-7. McMurry regained the lead in the top of the 9th inning when Beckham Paul singled up the middle to score Michael Smosna, who led off the inning with a ringing triple to right-center field. Jonathan Enriquez earned the win for McMurry, pitching 2.2 innings in relief of Hunter Poe. Poe pitched six innings, giving up four runs, two earned, on four hits and striking out two.

UW-Oshkosh began its return to the NCAA Division III Championship with a bang. In their first national tournament appearance since 2018, the Titans (32-13) dismantled the University of Chicago (Ill.) (26-15) with a 34-8 victory, tallying 31 hits including seven doubles, two triples, and three home runs. All nine starting batters recorded at least two hits and a pair of RBIs. Jake Surane led the Titans at the plate with his first career cycle, tallying a personal best nine RBIs on a grand slam, an RBI single, a two-RBI triple, and a two-RBI double. He also scored four runs and drew a walk. Carter Stebane had a team best five hits including an RBI double, a two-RBI triple, and an RBI single, notching five runs of his own and stealing a bag. Logan Schill scored the most runs for Oshkosh on Friday with six. He hit 4-for-7, all singles.

Returning to the NCAA postseason for the first time since 2017, Emory University made an opening round statement with its 7-1 win over Maryville College in the first game of the Lynchburg Regional played on the campus of Liberty University. Junior Josh Zuckerman was stellar on the mound to advance the Eagles into tomorrow's winner bracket contest as he collected his fifth win of the season. Zuckerman struck out five of the first 10 batters he faced and allowed just one hit through six scoreless frames to start his outing. He worked through seven full frames, giving up one run and striking out seven. Offensively, sophomore Zach Hanson was a driving force as the Eagles broke open the game with five runs across the third and fourth innings. Hanson brought in the game's first run as he singled up the middle to score senior Brok Liu and then plated two more in the fourth with his single through the shortstop hole. Emory found out their opponent early on Saturday as Lynchburg defeated Marymount 7-6 in a game started at 10 pm due to rain in the region.

Mike Shannon struck out nine and Tyler Cannon had three hits and scored three runs to lead #15 Rowan to a 9-1 win over Grove City (31-12) in the opening game of the NCAA Mount Union Regional. The Profs (32-10) move into the winners bracket of the double-elimination tournament and will face Catholic, which defeated Mount Union, 11-10, on Saturday at noon. Shannon (7-2) went eight innings allowing just one run and five hits. The graduate student got out of a jam in the third with two strikeouts and didn't allow The nine strikeouts were his second highest total of the season as he earned the victory, which snapped a two-game losing streak for the Profs.

No. 17th Case Western kicked off the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship with a dominating 19-9 win over North Central College on Friday at Nobby's Ballpark in Cleveland. Senior right fielder Nick Harms finished the game three-for-four with two runs, three RBIs, two walks, and a home run. His seventh-inning single was the 200th hit of his career, as he became the sixth player in program history to reach the milestone in a Spartan uniform.

Despite losing an early lead, Washington University opened up its regional bracket with a 10-9, walk-off win over Ohio Northern on Friday afternoon at Nicolay Field on the campus of Adrian College. The offense continued to be hot late for the Polar Bears as they would add two runs in the top of the seventh before tying the game up in the top of the ninth with three runs on four hits. Not wanting to start their regional on the downside, the Bears got the game-winning run in the bottom of the frame, preventing extra innings. After Anthony Equale flew out to center, Bradon Buday hit a hard single to the shortstop and slid into first, head first, to reach safely. A bloop single to center by Colter Couillard-Rodak put runners on first and second. Noah Reichman then stepped up and smacked a single to left that was played off the wall. Buday had to wait and tag up, but once he started, he ran through third, touching the base, and made another slide, this time into home around the nearly simultaneously arriving throw from the third baseman for the walk-off run.

Alex Henderson hit three home runs, including a grand slam in the second inning, and went back-to-back with Andrew Mazzone twice, as No. 16 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps rolled to a 23-3 win over No. 29 Buena Vista in the first round of the NCAA Division III Regionals, hosted by Wisconsin-La Crosse. The win improves CMS to 32-12 on the year, tying the program record for wins in a season set last year. Henderson finished the game 3-for-6 with three homers, five runs scored and eight RBI, while Mazzone was 2-for-4 with three walks and three runs scored.CMS will meet UW-La Crosse, a 4-2 winner over Bethany Lutheran.

Middlebury quickly grabbed a six-run advantage (6-0) in the top of the third inning and never gave it back in a 6-5 victory over #19 Cortland in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. Cortland put together a rally with two outs in the fourth stanza. A run-scoring base knock from JJ DeLawder swelled into five tallies to cut the Panther advantage to 6-5. The Red Dragons tried to tie the contest in their last at-bat, but Stefano Yozzo sent down Cortland in order to claim his fourth save of the year and the 6-5 victory. Middlebury will play host Kean who defeated Husson 4-2 in the opening game of the Regional being held in Union, N.J.

Top-ranked Johns Hopkins hit six home runs and
used an eight-run second inning to grab control of
Friday's NCAA Tournament-opener against Farmingdale
State and the Blue Jays cruised into Saturday's
winner's bracket game with a 19-7 victory over the
Rams at Babb Field. The win bumps Hopkins' record to
40-3 on the year, including 23-0 at home.
Johns Hopkins athletics photo by by Marty Corcoran

Baldwin Wallace defeated Ramapo in the first round of the NCAA Division III Regional Tournament hosted by Salisbury by a final score of 19-7 at Donnie Williams Sea Gull Stadium. BW (31-13) got the scoring started early and often by taking a one-run lead in the first and following that up by scoring 11 over the next two frames. Ramapo (27-15) scored three in the fourth, but the Yellow Jackets followed with a three-run inning of their own and tacked on some runs in the late innings to set a program record for the most runs scored in an NCAA Tournament game.

Another strong start from Charlie Hale and some clutch hitting from throughout the lineup led the No. 4 Endicott past Bridgewater State, 5-2. In the bottom of the frame, the Gulls took their first lead of the day at 2-1 after three straight hits from John Mulready, AJ Hamm and Robbie Wladkowski. A few innings later, Danny MacDougall (Taunton, Mass.) padded the lead, as he singled up the middle to score TJ Liponis and give the Gulls a 3-1 lead. Meanwhile, Hale returned to his normal dominant self, as he retired 13 straight Bears between the second and sixth innings. The Bears threatened in the top of the eighth and even plated a run, but Jake Harmony entered with the bases loaded and immediately induced a bases loaded lineout double play turned by Hamm and up the middle to end the inning and strand all three runners. Doubles from MacDougall and Frammartino gave the Gulls an insurance run heading into the ninth, and Jenkins entered to close out the 5-2 lead. He recorded a strikeout, lineout, and foul out to lock up the game one win.

No. 2 Denison kicked off action in the Granville Regional Friday morning against the HCAC champion, Manchester. The Spartans of Manchester came into Granville as the 4-seed, facing a tall task against the 35-5 Big Red. Following a breakout second inning, the Big Red were able to pull away in an 8-2 victory, placing them into the winner's bracket. The Spartans fall to their final life and will play in an elimination game tomorrow morning against the loser of Penn State-Behrend and Keystone.

Sixth-ranked Trinity (Texas) put on an offensive showcase with a 20-2 win over Huntingdon in the opening game of the NCAA Regional Tournament that is hosted by East Texas Baptist University this weekend. The Tigers (37-7) scored in all but two innings in the win over the Hawks (22-20), launching six doubles and four home runs among 18 total hits in the game. This is the fourth straight year that Trinity has opened the NCAA Regionals with a win, though this is the first meeting between Trinity and Huntingdon – including the regular season. Brandon Morio earned the win for the Tigers, facing just one hitter to improve to 7-0 this season. He came on in relief in the fifth inning, replacing starter Jake Beck. Beck pitched 4.2 innings, allowing two runs on five hits and striking out three batters. Trajan Lee came in for Morio and pitched the rest of the game to earn his first save of the year, finishing with 4.0 shutout innings in which he allowed just three hits and struck out a team-best four batters. The offense was the star today, though, led by outfielder Kaleb Woodward. Woodward went 4-for-5 with two doubles and a home run, scoring five runs, and collecting three RBI. His five runs scored ties a school record and he also becomes the first Tiger ever to score five runs in a game more than once – he also had five runs against Austin earlier this year.

The seventh-ranked Salisbury opened the NCAA Division III Baseball Tournament with a 12-2 drubbing of the Johnson & Wales Wildcats in Friday afternoon's regional action at Donnie Williams Sea Gull Baseball Stadium. With a win, the Sea Gulls will face Baldwin Wallace in day two of the Salisbury Regional on Saturday at 12 p.m. The winner of that game will advance to the regional championship on Sunday, while the loser will play in an elimination game on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.

No. 7 Salve Regina won its opening game in the 2025 NCAA Division III Championships, 5-0, over Keene State  and notched its program-record 18th consecutive victory (passing the 17 mark set in 2023). Starter Brayden Clark (W, 11-2) struck out five in eight innings while scattering four hits and Nolan Romanowski pitched a 1-2-3 ninth with two Ks as Salve Regina improved to 33-7 on the season. At the top of the Seahawk order, Brandon Grover reached base four times on three hits and scored four runs including a solo home run in the seventh. Clark retired the first 10 Owls he faced before hitting a batter in the fourth. Keene State did not get its first base hit until the fifth inning. Salve Regina scored single runs in the first three frames and added another in the fifth before Grover's third home run of the year capped the scoring.

Keystone opened the Granville Regional with a bang as they defeated Penn State Behrend 13-1 Friday afternoon at Big Red Field. Robert Estrada led off the game with a solo home run and Andy Rivas followed up with a two-run shot. The Giants added two runs in the second as Griffin Yastremski smoked a ball over the right field wall and Chase Boyle brought home a run with a triple. The Nittany Lions broke the shutout with a sacrifice fly in the fourth. Keystone responded with six runs in the bottom half to make it a 10-run game. Two more runs crossed the plate in the seventh inning for the Giants as Greg Verano provided a sacrifice fly and Estrada singled home a run. Quinn Holt secured his sixth win as he tossed eight innings with eight strikeouts. He gave up one run off five hits Luke Baker pitched the last frame in relief and struck out two.