May 15, 2026 By Jerin Steele 4 min read

A University of Chicago team that hadn’t played in 13 days going up against the pitcher with the lowest ERA in all of college baseball seemed like it would be advantage Washington & Jefferson.

But those that have been around baseball long enough know that things don’t always go as expected.

Chicago came ready to hit Friday.

The Maroons’ first five batters reached against Presidents ace Brendan Cruz, four of them on hits, and each one came into score in the first inning to give Chicago an early cushion.

The Maroons rolled from there to an 8-1 win in an NCAA Division III regional game at Ross Memorial Park.

Chicago (28-13) plays Scranton at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, while Washington & Jefferson (32-12) meets Bridgewater (Va.) in an elimination game at 11 a.m.

Scranton defeated Bridgewater, 7-2, in the first game of the day.

Cruz entered the game with a 0.93 ERA and had allowed seven earned runs all season, but Chicago doubled that total Friday.

“I thought their approach was good and in the first inning most of their hits were to the middle to back side,” Presidents coach Jeff Mountain said. Brendan’s maybe not your typical day one regional starter that’s going to sit at 88 to 91 (miles per hour) with a hammer slider. He’s going to compete really well and throw three pitches for strikes and they seemed to be ready for that.

“Brendan’s numbers were eye-popping this year, but sometimes stuff evens out. He wasn’t a strikeout per inning guy and he allowed an extremely low number of hits, so the ball is put in play and eventually it evens out and they’re not at somebody.”

Braden Jirovec began the bottom of the first with a single to right field. Erik Rinder followed with a single to left and Michael Gladden was hit to load the bases.

Nathan Bae singled to right to drive in Jirovec and Harrison Belden ripped a bases clearing double to center.

Jack Sharp added a two-out RBI infield single and Chicago led 5-1 at the end of the first.

Chicago continued its onslaught in the second. Rinder was hit by a pitch with one out, Gladden doubled down the first base line and Bae brought both of them in with a double that bounced over the right-center field fence.

That made it 7-1.

“We have all the confidence in the world right now at the plate,” Rinder said. “The Maroons are hot right now and we feel good. It doesn’t matter what happened in the regular season, because the regionals are a much different game. Honestly we’re just confident and ready to hit the ball.”

Chicago starter John Butka (7-0) pitched seven innings and did not allow an earned run. He yielded only three hits and walks apiece and struck out three. Washington & Jefferson had only three runners in scoring position after the first.

Cruz (10-1) put up three scoreless innings afterwards, but the damage was done. He allowed nine hits, walked two and struck out one.

Justin Giarrusso came on in relief for W&J in the sixth and gave up a solo home run to Rinder.

The Presidents struck first with some help from Chicago. After two quick outs, Luke Alvarez walked and Andrew Miko reached on an error after Bae misplayed a slow chopper to third. That put two runners on for Jack Anderson, who singled over the second base bag to score Alvaraez.

It was pretty much the only highlight of the day for the Presidents, who will need to win out to keep its season alive.

“Brendan was able to limit the damage, so we didn’t have to go too deep into our bullpen,” Mountain said. “Now we’re going at it with the idea that we’re going to play four games in the next two days. I hope we come out aggressive and confident tomorrow. We’ll definitely need to do that.”

Scranton 7-2

Joey Granko had four hits, scored three runs and had an RBI and three other Scranton players had three hits in a victory over Bridgewater (Va.) in the first game of the day.

It was Scranton’s first win in an NCAA Division III Regional.

John Heitzman, Brayden Keller and Vincent Napolitano finished with three hits each. Keller had an RBI single in the sixth and a two-run double in the ninth, which was part of a three-run inning that put the game away.

Napolitano produced a pair of RBI singles.

John DeStefano was the winning pitcher with eight strikeouts over 6.1 innings.