The NCAA Division III baseball tournament brackets were released on Monday. Two teams from the Pine Tree State will be represented when regional games are played this upcoming weekend.
The #2 team in the country the University of Southern Maine Huskies has been selected as an at large bid and as a host in Gorham for play starting Friday. USM (34-7) will host New England College (25-15) in the opening game of double elimination action. The Huskies lost to another NCAA tournament bound team UMass-Boston on Saturday in the Little East baseball tournament, eliminating USM. USM was 15-0 at home this season in the regular season at Ed Flaherty Field and are making their 25th tournament appearance. The Huskies have eight regular starters who bat over .300 led by Jake Dexter who bats .376. Ben Lambert bolsters the pitching staff with a 9-0 record and a 1.14 ERA allowing just eight earned runs, 41 hits, 27 walks, with 62 strikeouts in 63 innings pitched. The Huskies won NCAA titles in 1991 and 1997 under Ed Flaherty, and was national runner up in 2013. This is the third straight tournament appearance for USM, and seventh in last eight seasons. New England College won the NECC title last Monday over Mitchell College. The other two teams in the regional are Oswego State (29-12), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (22-17-1) who will meet in the second game Friday.
The Saint Josephs College Monks are also in the 2019 tourney field, traveling to regional host UMass-Boston. At 32-10, the Monks won the GNAC championship with an 8-7 come from behind 11 inning win over Johnson and Wales last Saturday. St Josephs will play Wheaton College (27-10) in the first round. The Monks are making their ninth tournament appearance overall, and first since 2014. Wheaton is coming off two straight losses in the NEWMAC tournament. The Monks are led offensively by Joey Murphy and Jared Gagne who bat .428 and .413 respectively. Greg Emanuelson hits .343 and leads the team in homeruns with six and RBI with 47. Matt Bergeron heads up the pitching staff in a tie with wins (6-3), and a team leading ERA at 2.88. In the same regional field, the team that defeated Husson in three games in Bangor over this past weekend in the NAC-CUNYAC championship series gets to open up with the hosts from UMass-Boston (30-11). UMass-Boston ended up capturing the Little East title and is the first three-peat winner of that tournament. Baruch University (17-18) is making their first ever NCAA Div III baseball tournament appearance.
The 16 regional winners this coming weekend move on to a best of three super regional next weekend, with the winners advancing to the Division III World Series. If USM and St Josephs both win the regional round this weekend, they would meet in that super regional for a chance to advance to the World Series in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Below is the schedule for day one of the regional tournaments at the two sites:
Friday, May 17
At Ed Flaherty Field Gorham, Maine home of University of Southern Maine Huskies:
Game 1- New England College vs USM 12 PM
Game 2- Oswego State vs MIT 3:30 PM
At Monan Park Boston, Massachusetts home of the UMass-Boston Beacons
Game 1- Baruch University vs UMass-Boston 12 PM
Game 2- Saint Josephs College (ME) vs Wheaton College 3:30 PM
