Eight Teams Selected to NCAA Division III New England Baseball Regional, Hosted by the ECAC
Trinity College (CT) Receives the Top Seed in 2008 NCAA Division III New England Baseball Regional Championship
CAPE COD, Mass. -- Trinity College (Connecticut) received the top seed in the 2008 NCAA Division III New England Baseball Regional Championship, held at Whitehouse Field in Harwich, Massachusetts May 14-18. The Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) is hosting the event for the sixth time since 2001, and this year welcomes eight schools to participate in the double elimination tournament.
The NCAA Division III Baseball Committee has announced the 54 teams that will compete in the 2008 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship this morning. Six teams will compete at five first-round sites; eight teams will compete at three first-round sites. All first rounds will use a double-elimination format. Thirty-four conference champions qualified automatically. Winners of the eight first-round tournaments will qualify for the double-elimination championship at Fox Cities Stadium in Appleton, Wisconsin, May 23-27.
The New England Small College Athletic Conference tournament champion, Trinity enters with a perfect 37-0 mark on the season - the best start to a season in Division III history. The Bantams went through the NESCAC with a 12-0 record, and captured their second league title in the program's history. In 2007, the Bantams made it to an NCAA tournament as a five seed in the Ithaca Regional, and have successfully reached the tournament in four of the last six seasons.
In addition to the NESCAC Champions, six of the seven teams in the regional also received their conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Championship. The No. 2 seed is Wheaton College (Massachusetts), which comes in after winning the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference title with a 32-8 record. The Lyons won the 2006 New England Regional and make an appearance in the NCAA tournament for the eighth time in nine years.
In the third slot are the Little East Conference champions from Keene State College. The Owls have a 33-9 mark thus far on the season, and improve on the fifth seed they received in the New England Regional in 2007. The University of Southern Maine receives the No. 4 seed, and is the only at-large selection to the regional. The 32-12 Huskies reached the NCAA tournament every year from 1987 through 2001, but have only made it twice in the past seven seasons.
Seeds five through eight are as follows: Western New England College (31-11), The Commonwealth Coast Conference champions; Saint Joseph's College of Maine (28-16), the winners of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) tournament; Worcester State College (23-16), the automatic bid recipient from the Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference (MASCAC); and Castleton State College (22-18) from the North Atlantic Conference (NAC).
In Wednesday's opening round on May 14th, No. 4 Southern Maine will take on No. 5 Western New England at 9:30 a.m., which will be followed by No. 1 Trinity playing No. 8 Castleton, in Game 2 beginning at 1:00 p.m. Game 3 will start at 4:30 p.m. and feature No. 3 Keene State facing off against No. 6 Saint Joseph's. The final game on Wednesday will be between No. 2 Wheaton and No. 7 Worcester State at 8:00 p.m.
There will be four more games played on both Thursday and
Friday, two games on Saturday, and the if necessary Game 15 on
Sunday. All games will be webcast from
www.ecacsports.com through Bullpen Media.
In the 2007 regional final, No. 2 Eastern Connecticut State University defeated No. 5 Keene State College, 18-3.
Whitehouse Field is the home of the Harwich Mariners, a member of the Cape Cod Baseball League.
For more information and results throughout the tournament, visit www.ecacsports.com.
About the ECAC
The Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) is the nation's largest athletic conference and only multi-divisional conference, with 321 member institutions and over 122,000 student-athletes ranging across 16 states from Maine to North Carolina and westerly to Illinois. Established in 1938 with 58 charter members, the ECAC has since emerged as the nationwide leader in service. The Asa S. Bushnell Center, named after inaugural commissioner Asa S. Bushnell, serves as the main office for the ECAC. It is located in Centerville, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The ECAC administers nearly 100 regular season and postseason championships for 37 men's and women's sports.
