West Chester Baseball Headed Back to the National Finals

TOURNAMENT CENTRAL

WEST CHESTER, PA – West Chester University's baseball team has reached the national finals and will take on North Greenville University on Sunday, June 5 at 6 p.m. at the U.S. Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C.
 
Admission to the 2022 NCAA Division II Baseball National Championships is free with general admission seating in the complex. The Golden Rams will play their second game of the tournament on Tuesday at either 1:30 p.m. or 6 p.m., depending on the outcome of Sunday's contest.
 
All of the games at the national finals will be streamed live on NCAA.com. Or, fans can navigate to the tournament web page (https://umotrojans.com/feature/D2Baseball) where links to the broadcasts, live stats and post-game press conferences will be available.
 
The other first-round matchups at the finals include: (2) Point Loma (Calif.) vs. (7) Illinois-Springfield; (3) Southern Arkansas vs. (6) Rollins (Fla.); and (4) Southern New Hampshire vs. (5) Angelo State.
 
It marks the fifth time in the last 17 years that the Golden Rams have reached the national finals. West Chester is 9-4 all-time at the Division II national championships with a pair of national titles (2012, 2017). The Golden Rams bring a personal eight-game winning streak at the final site into their 2022 appearance. West Chester has not lost since 2009 (8-6 vs. UC-San Diego in Cary, NC). West Chester is 6-4 all-time at the U.S. Baseball National Training Center, including the 2012 national championship and a 2-2 mark this past March when the Golden Rams travelled down to the Tar Heel State for the D2 Challenge.
 
The Golden Rams' first-round opponent, North Greenville, is new to West Chester. The two schools have never met. The Crusaders compete in Conference Carolinas, and though these two have never played, West Chester shows a 2-2 record against the Conference Carolinas in the NCAA Tournament.
 
Overall, West Chester is 4-2 against teams from the Conference Carolinas. The Golden Rams are 2-2 all-time against Francis Marion and have a win over Chowan and UNC-Pembroke as well. The Golden Rams defeated Francis Marion in the 2006 Division II National Championships in an elimination game and topped Chowan, 12-6, in the 2016 Atlantic Regional when Chowan was a member of the CIAA and thus a part of the region.
 
West Chester is led by all-region selections Zack Wright (Columbus, N.J./No. Burlington County Regional) and Mike Ferrara (Jamison, Pa./Archbishop Wood). Wright broke the school's single-season record for stolen bases (39) while helping West Chester shatter the school's single-season team mark with 154 steals. He is hitting .311 and is tied for seventh on the school's single-season chart for walks. He also robbed Slippery Rock catcher Connor Hamilton of a two-run homer in the first game of the NCAA Atlantic Regional – a game that the Golden Rams eventually won, 2-1. Ferrara's 22 doubles is fourth in a single season at WCU and his 64 runs batted in is fourth as well. He leads the team with a .365 batting average and .659 slugging percentage.
 
The starting rotation is highlighted by left-handed ace Braeden Fausnaught (Danville, Pa./Danville), who set a new school record with 17 starts on the mound and shattered the single-season strikeout mark with 121 whiffs in 95 innings, is 9-2 with a 3.30 ERA. He is eight innings away from the single-season mark for innings pitched. Righty Joe Sperone (Broomall, Pa./Cardinal O'Hara) is 8-2 on the year with a 3.53 ERA. Expect these two workhorses to get the ball in West Chester's first games.
 
West Chester reached the Division II national championships by winning a pair of doubleheaders on back-to-back weekends over the last 14 days. The Golden Rams dropped the first game of a best-of-3 series against Seton Hill two weeks ago, but rebounded for a sweep of the final two games to advance to the Atlantic Super Regional. There, the Golden Rams chose the difficult path once again by losing Game 1 of the best-of-3 series to East Stroudsburg, but coming back two days later to win a pair and punch their ticket to Cary, NC.
 
In the regional, it was sophomore Sean Szestowicki (Mount Royal, N.J./Kingsway Regional), who led the way offensively with a team-best .357 batting average and 7 runs batted in that was second among the three teams in the pod. In the Super Regional, it was Keith Flaherty (Philadelphia, Pa./St. Joe's Prep.) hitting .571 (4-for-7) and Luke Cantwell's (Broomall, Pa./Marple Newtown) double and two home runs that paced the Golden Rams.
 
Over the entire course of the tournament, Cantwell is hitting .385 with a double, three HRs and nine RBI. Ferrara is hitting .346 with three doubles and two HRs and six RBI. He has scored nine runs.
 
On the mound, Fausnaught and Sperone are both 2-0. Fausnaught sports a 2.70 ERA in the playoffs with 23 strikeouts in 20 innings pitched. Sperone has only walked three in 16.2 innings of work in the NCAA Tournament.