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here for the bracket in PDF.
Click
here for the ASC Tournament history in PDF.
Clinton, MS – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor baseball team will make a fourth straight appearance in the American Southwest Conference Championship Tournament when the Cru makes the familiar trip to Clinton, Mississippi this weekend for a first-round series at Mississippi College. UMHB will face the Choctaws in a best-of-three series at Frierson Field on the MC campus on Friday and Saturday with the series winner moving on to the Second Round of the ASC Championship series on May 7-9. The first game this weekend is scheduled for a 6:00 PM first pitch on Friday evening. Game two will start at 2:00 PM on Saturday with the “if necessary” game to start 30 minutes after the completion of game two on Saturday.
The Cru enters the weekend series with a 22-17 overall record and UMHB went 13-8 in ASC West Division play. The Cru clinched the ASC Tournament berth by taking two out of three games from Sul Ross State in the regular season-ending series in Belton last weekend. UMHB is making a fourth straight postseason appearance for the first time since the Cru moved to NCAA Division III and UMHB will travelling to Mississippi in the first round for the third straight season. Mississippi College is 32-7 overall on the year and went 14-3 in ASC East Division play. The Choctaws are ranked as high as 9th in the country this season.
The Cru and Choctaws did not meet in the regular season this year. The two teams have met in the First Round of each of the last two ASC Championship Tournaments with the Choctaws sweeping each of those series. MC won game one 7-3 and then took game two 10-1 in a rain-plagued series in 2008. Last season, the Choctaws opened the series with a 3-2 win before closing out the Cru with a 14-4 victory. You can follow the UMHB-MC series with streaming audio of all of the games, or with live stats. UMHB will not broadcast the games, but the Choctaws will provide live audio coverage through this link: http://www.stretchinternet.com/mcschedule.html. Mississippi College will also provide live stats through the school's athletic department website at http://sidearmstats.com/mississippi/baseball.
The UMHB-Mississippi College series is one of four first-round series in the ASC Tournament. West Division #1 seed Texas Lutheran University (29-11) will host East Division #4 seed U.T.-Dallas (23-14). West Division #2 seed Hardin-Simmons University (21-19) will host East Division #3 seed Louisiana College (18-21). East Division #1 seed U.T.-Tyler (30-10) will host West Division #4 seed McMurry University (21-19). The winners of those series will then move on to a double elimination championship round at the highest remaining West Division seed next weekend. The winner of the UMHB-MC series will open the Second Round of the ASC Tournament against the winner of the Texas Lutheran-UTD series. The ASC Tournament champion will receive the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III National Championships.
