NCAA BASEBALL: Scranton, Keystone enter DIII tourney with momentum
They came from practically the same area, and they wound up in just about the same place in the NCAA Division III baseball championship tournament.
The University of Scranton and Keystone College got there in very different ways, though.
The Royals and Giants are among three local college teams that will begin play in the tournament that begins Friday. Scranton (30-11) faces USA South Conference champion North Carolina Wesleyan in the second game of the Christopher Newport Regional at Captains Park in Newport News, Virginia. Meanwhile, closer to home, Keystone meets New England Small College Athletic Conference champ Middlebury College in the second game of the Misericordia Regional. Both of those games are scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m.
Head coach Pete Egbert’s Misericordia squad, currently ranked No. 11 in the d3baseball.com Top 25 poll, enters the weekend winners of 16 of their last 17 games are are the highest-regarded of the three area squads looking for a title. But, Scranton and Keystone also enter the fray with plenty of momentum.
The Royals won their three games in the Landmark Conference tournament last weekend by an average of nine runs per game against two opponents – Elizabethtown and Catholic – that still earned NCAA at-large bids.
In fact, Scranton’s challenging schedule might be the factor that gives it the most confidence heading into Virginia, head coach Mike Bartoletti said. His team boasts four wins over Elizabethtown, a pair against Catholic, and took individual games against three other teams — Babson, Misericordia and Penn State-Harrisburg — that all are hosting regionals this weekend.
It’s a strong resume for a team that came within one win of a Landmark title before dropping the last two games of the championship series to Susquehanna on its home field in 2023.
“I honestly think that this was our toughest schedule, on paper,” Bartoletti said. “This team has been on a mission since last year. They’ve really worked hard since September, and the chemistry on our team is really good. I think that’s the key to the whole thing. We got some really big out-of-conference wins, and that has prepared us for this tournament.”
Keystone won its 19th consecutive conference title last weekend, taking two straight games from Penn State-Harrisburg at Christy Mathewson Field to shock the United East Conference.
It doesn’t have the pile of wins against tournament teams Scranton has. It dropped its two games against Misericordia and Scranton, allowing 34 runs in them, and its only two wins against tournament teams were the ones in that came against the Lions in the United East series.
But with speculation swirling about the future of the institution, Keystone enters the tournament opener against Middlebury, winners of its last nine games. Head coach Jamie Shevchik says his squad is playing its best ball of the season.
“We didn’t play our best baseball throughout the whole season,” Shevchik said. “I think we match up well (with Middlebury) based on the information we have. But at this point, it doesn’t matter who we play. If we play a similar type of baseball to what we’ve done the last few weeks, we can beat anybody in the country.
“There’s no pressure on us moving forward into next week or beyond. We just accomplished the biggest pressure moment that we’re going to have in a season, and that’s our conference championship. What we do now, moving forward, is pretty much playing with the house’s money.”
