W&J baseball assigned to Salisbury, Md., pod
The Washington & Jefferson College baseball team will travel to Maryland to take on Salisbury University as the Presidents open NCAA Division III Regional play on Friday.
Joining W&J and Salisbury in the four-team, double-elimination regional in Maryland are Rowan University and Penn State Abington.
The Presidents enter the NCAA Tournament with a 32-11 overall record and a 21-3 regular season mark in the PAC. W&J secured an NCAA Pool A bid after winning the PAC Tournament Championship, 8-1, over Bethany on Saturday. W&J outscored its opponents, 27-5, in the three PAC Tournament games.
After a 3-7 start to the season, W&J won 29 of its next 33 games. The Presidents will be making their seventh appearance in the NCAA Tournament after capturing their 12th PAC Championship.
The Presidents first appearance in the NCAA Tournament came in 2009, when W&J traveled to Salisbury, Md., to compete in the NCAA Division III South Regional.
The host Sea Gulls compiled a 34-8-1 record. Salisbury had a 19-2 mark in the Capital Athletic Conference regular season before suffering a pair of losses to Penn State Harrisburg in the CAC Tournament on May 3-4.
The lone common opponent between W&J and Salisbury is Frostburg State University. The Presidents defeated the Bobcats, 6-0, April 24 at Ross Memorial Park. Salisbury swept a three-game CAC Series from FSU. The Sea Gulls bested the Bobcats 4-1 on March 23 before winning by scores of 11-10 and 12-6 on March 24.
W&J’s is coached by Jeff Mountain.
Rowan, the top seeded team in the four-team pod, enters with a 30-11 overall record. The Profs finished with a 14-4 regular season record in the New Jersey Athletic Conference. Rowan was eliminated from the NJAC Tournament with a 3-1 loss to Ramapo College on May 4.
Penn State Abington, the fourth seed in the pod, enters the NCAA Tournament after capturing the North Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament for the first time. Abington has a 23-15 overall record and finished the regular season with a 14-3 mark in the NEAC.
On Monday afternoon, the NCAA Division III Baseball Committee announced the 58 teams that will compete in the 2019 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship.
Four teams will compete at 13 regional sites and two teams will compete at three regional sites. The four-team regionals will use a double-elimination format and the two-team regionals will play a best-of-five series. Forty conference champions automatically qualified.
Winners of the 16 regional tournaments will qualify for eight, best-of-three series at the super regionals, which run Friday and Saturday, May 24-25. The eight super regional winners will then qualify for the pool play double-elimination championship at Perfect Game Field at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, May 31-June 5.