Baseball to Face Rowan on Wednesday in First Round of the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional
5/17/2010
(media notes) / (bracket) / (regional tournament page)
Widener on Wednesday will face Rowan in the first round of the NCAA Division III Baseball Tournament's Mid-Atlantic Regional, to be played at Waterfront Park in Trenton, NJ.
The games in the double-elimination regional begin Wednesday and continue to Sunday. Widener faces sixth-seeded Rowan in game three of the first round at 4:30 pm. Tickets will be charged each day and are $8 general admission and $4 for students, seniors and children under 12.
The seedings for the Mid-Atlantic Regional are as follows:
1. Johns Hopkins (38-4)
2. Kean (34-10)
3. Widener (25-12)
4. Alvernia (32-10)
5. Keystone (29-7)
6. Rowan (24-14-1)
7. Manhattanville (22-19-1)
8. Moravian (26-13)
Widener (25-12, 14-4 CC) punched its ticket by winning four consecutive elimination games for its first Commonwealth Conference title. It is the school's first league crown since taking the Middle Atlantic Conference in 1999 and it earned the top seed by claiming its first regular-season league title since winning the MAC Southern Division in 1978.
Sophomore Sean Saverio (Horsham, PA) was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, ending with a .444 batting average, a 1.222 slugging percentage, 10 RBI and eight runs. Senior Tom Connelly (Media, PA) delivered the big blow in the ultimate game, hitting a go-ahead, two-run homer against Elizabethtown in Widener's 9-5 victory.
Widener features the league's top two hitters in junior Alex Oliver (Lebanon, NJ) at .434 and Saverio at .417. Junior Tom DeAngelis (Pottstown, PA) is fifth at .400 and sophomore southpaw Jason Ferrie (Royersford, PA) owns an 8-2 record on the mound with 59 strikeouts.
Widener is 6-10 in its five previous NCAA Tournament appearances, falling one victory shy of the College World Series in 1977 and 1982. The Pride are on a four-game skid in this tournament dating to 1982 and have not faced a non-New Jersey school in this field since 1978.
The team's last two trips to the NCAA Tournament involved regionals in New Jersey. Widener played in Wayne in 1982 and Montclair in 1999.
The Pride are ranked third in the latest NCAA Mid-Atlantic Region poll and their schedule is ranked the 17th toughest in the country. This comes after their schedule was ranked fifth earlier this season.