NASHVILLE - After winning their first NCAA Midwest Regional title, the No. 21 Trevecca Nazarene University baseball team is in Cary, North Carolina for the 2021 NCAA Division II College Baseball World Series. The Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament champion are the fourth in the eight-team double-elimination tournament. The Division II College World Series begins Saturday, June 5, and ends on Saturday, June 12.
Trevecca plays in the tournament opener on Saturday, June 5 at 1:00 PM (CT). FULL BRACKET
WATCH LIVE
2021 NCAA Division II College World Series | CWS Championship Central
Saturday, June 5 – 1:00 PM (CT)
#4 Trevecca Nazarene University Trojans (36-11) vs #5 Tampa University Spartans (20-4)
Coleman Field | USA Baseball National Training Complex
Links for live video, live stats, and press conferences are on the Trevecca Baseball Schedule Page.
Admission to the NCAA Division II Baseball National Championship is free to all fans this year as general admission. Gates open 45 minutes prior to the first game each day. The stadium will not be cleared out between games and only the third-base side of the stadium will be used for general fan admission. Please check the official championship home page each day for changes or updates to fan and attendance policy.
In last week's National Collegiate Baseball Writer's Association (NCBWA) poll, Trevecca ranked No. 21 and Tampa No. 13.
Also playing Saturday on the Trojans side of the bracket is top seed Central Missouri versus eighth seed Northwest Nazarene at 5 PM (CT).
With a win on Saturday, the Trojans meet the winner of the Central Missouri/NW Nazarene matchup Monday, June 7 at 5:00 PM (CT). Should the Trojans fall Saturday, they play the loser of the Central Missouri/NW Nazarene matchup Monday, June 7 at 1:00 PM (CT).
The other side of the bracket includes two Sunday tilts. At 1:00 PM (CT) third seed Angelo State versus sixth seed, Wingate followed by second seed Seton Hill versus seventh seed Southern New Hampshire at 5:00 PM (CT).
The Trojans are 21-4 over their last 25 games and 8-1 in postseason play.
THE COLLEGE WORLD SERIES FIELD
1 - Central: University of Central Missouri Mules (43-6)
2 - Atlantic: Seton Hill University Griffins (38-6)
3 - South Central: Angelo State University Rams (42-7)
4 - Midwest: Trevecca Nazarene University Trojans (36-11)
5 - South: Tampa University Spartans (20-4)
6 - Southeast: Wingate University Bulldogs (34-12)
7 - East: Southern New Hampshire University Penmen (28-7)
8 - West: Northwest Nazarene University Nighthawks (34-8)
2021 POSTSEASON QUICK NOTES
Trevecca is the 2021 Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament champion, winning the tournament at Prasco Park (Mason, Ohio) with a 4-0 record. Trevecca swept through the tourney defeating Malone 4-1, Kentucky Wesleyan 6-5, Hillsdale 9-1, and Tiffin 7-6.
Trevecca advanced to the 2021 NCAA Division II Midwest Region, their first trip to region play in the NCAA Era. The Trojans won the region, going 4-1 at Lou Brock Sports Complex on the campus of Lindenwood University (St. Charles, Mo.)
Trevecca entered Sunday's region championship on an 11-game win streak. When Davenport University upended the Trojans 6-2, it forced an if-necessary game, a game the Trojans won 11-9 for the championship and a trip to Cary.
The run through the region saw the Trojans win their opener 8-3 over Quincy, then a 7-4 victory against Lindenwood, and 9-4 beating of Northwood. Davenport ended the perfect postseason for Trevecca with a 6-2 win. The Trojans answered with their win, 11-9 for the title. In the title game, Trevecca centerfielder Braden Odom hit for the cycle to fuel the Trojan offense. Odom went 4-5 with four runs scored and four RBI. Joseph McNamee was 3-5 with a double and two RBI.
Trevecca coach Chase Sain, in his first year as head coach, replaced Ryan Schmalz on August 17, 2020, following the August 5, 2020 resignation for coach Schmalz.
This is the first Trevecca baseball team and first Great Midwest Athletic Conference baseball team to advance to the final eight teams.
The 2020 Trevecca team was, ironically, in North Carolina when their season ended due to COVID restrictions. They were 6-11 at the time. The team traveled to North Carolina for a week of games, but first weather and then COVID ended their stay without playing a game. Now they get to return to North Carolina, but this time for their first trip to the NCAA Division II College World Series.
The team has 15 seniors, 10 of which are super seniors who decided to return this year when their original senior season was interrupted abruptly.
Trevecca has two seven-year collegiate players – Dalton Mauldin and John Anderson. Both were given medical hardship for a sixth year and then COVID extended their career another year.
Trevecca had 11 players sit out the conference tournament due to a positive covid infection and subsequent contact tracing, making their 4-0 run to the championship all the more impressive.
TREVECCA BASEBALL POSTSEASON HISTORY
In 50 years of activity as a program, the Trevecca baseball team had been good but had never tasted a trip to the last event of the season. Perhaps it was fitting, then, that their first such trip did not come easily.
The Trojans had not been to a regional championship game in either the NCAA or the NAIA since 2006. On that day, it was Trevecca who had battled back through the loser's bracket under TNU Hall of Fame skipper Jeff Forehand. Trevecca had lost their first game in that tournament, and on Mother's Day, it was Trevecca backstop Zack Hilliard who blasted a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th inning to get the Trojans into the final tilt, but in the final game, the Trojans ran out of pitching and fell just short.
Twice before, the Trojans had been in a tournament which was the final step before a college world series appearance - but the last time they had been to such an event was in 1989 when Trevecca hall-of-famers Brad Stuart and Clay Boone were donning the Purple and White. Both previous trips this deep into the postseason were under Hall of Fame coach Elliot Johnson in the 1980s when the Trojans twice qualified for the NAIA Area 5 championships. In those events, Trevecca won just one game.
2021 POSTSEASON IN-DEPTH
On Sunday, the script was flipped for Trevecca. The Trojans were one win away from a trip to Cary, North Carolina for the NCAA Division II World Series - closer than they had ever been to such heights. And they were pushed to the brink by a gutty performance from a Davenport University (Mich.) team that had pounded the baseball all weekend.
To say the Trojans were in uncharted waters on Sunday would qualify as an understatement. But then, much of the 2021 season could have been classified in that manner as well. In their first season under head coach Chase Sain - Great Midwest Athletic Conference coach of the year - the Trojans claimed their fourth G-MAC championship, but they earned their first berth to the NCAA tournament. The previous three titles came in the first three years of the conference's existence, and they were all before the G-MAC earned an automatic berth into the Midwest Regional.
To win that G-MAC tournament title, the Trojans had to come from behind twice. They trailed in the seventh inning of the championship game against Tiffin before a four-run outburst gave the Trojans the title. Trevecca won that title despite playing very shorthanded in the tournament, as they were missing at least 12 players due to injury and covid protocol - particularly on the pitching staff. Yet for Sain and the Trojans, it was next man up, and the wins kept rolling in.
In the regional, Trevecca had to come from behind in each of their first three wins, and while the Trojans never trailed in the tournament's final game, they did have to bounce back from a 6-2 loss in the day's first game, and they had to hold off a furious charge from the Panthers who tied the game at 9-9 after the Trojans had led by as many as eight runs early in the game.
Since the calendar turned from April to May, the Trojans have played 15 games - and they have won 12 of those contests. They are scoring about seven and one-third runs per game, and they are allowing just more than four and a half runs per contest.
2021 LEADING MEN
The contributors have been too. In the G-MAC title game, it was Trey Vanderpool with a huge 3-run home run that put the game out of reach in the seventh inning. Ethan Harrison belted a 3-run homer against the regional hosts of Lindenwood University (Mo.) in the second game of the regional to give the Trojans the lead for good. Harrison knocked in a pair of runs against Northwood (Mich.), and Bryant Goolsby followed with an RBI single as Trevecca scored five times in the fourth inning to take the lead in that game on the way to the 9-4 win, and on Sunday it was a cycle from Braden Odom and two and one-third scoreless innings out of Jay Benard - who also set a new Trevecca career saves record during the championship - as the Trojans took the regional crown 11-9.
Odom and Bernard were consensus All-Midwest Region honorees, with both earning a place on both the NCBWA and D2CCA All-Midwest Region team lists. Tiger Cox was also honored on the D2CCA ballot.
THE 2021 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS FEED
Trevecca became the sixth team to punch its ticket to Cary for the NCAA Division II World Series - joining Northwest Nazarene (Idaho), Angelo State (Texas), Seton Hill (Pa.), Tampa (Fla.), and Wingate (N.C.). The Trojans are one of four teams making their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Division II World Series - along with Northwest Nazarene, Seton Hill, and Wingate - and with the final two berths to be settled on Monday, there could be one or two more newcomers joining that group. Of the teams already locked in the field for the World Series, only Tampa has won a National Title - the Spartans have won eight times including the most recent Championship contested in 2019 - though the University of Central Missouri who will play for the Central Region championship on Monday has also won a pair of championships with their most recent coming in 2003.
For the Trojans, Sunday certainly was a day to celebrate, but Sain knows that for his team, the work is just beginning.
TREVECCA NCAA ERA POSTSEASON HISTORY
The Trevecca baseball team is the second Trojan squad to advance to the NCAA Division II National Championship, the 2019 men's golf team advanced and finished fifth in the country. They are the only Trevecca team to win the region.
Individual Trojan athletes have advanced to their respective national championships – Caroline Hampton Cole / Cross Country, Alexa Rippy / Women's Golf, and Logan Rodgers / Track 5k.
MORE ABOUT THE TREVECCA TROJANS
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