MILLERSVILLE, Pa.- After outscoring opponents 51-18 to open the NCAA Tournament in West Chester last weekend, the West Chester University baseball team (42-10) is set to return to action this weekend at Millersville (39-16) in the Super Regionals against the Marauders. West Chester is making its first Super Regional appearance since 2022, and Millersville is making its first appearance since 2023 as both teams look for return trips to Cary, North Carolina, with a pair of wins at
Cooper Park in Millersville this weekend. The Golden Rams and Marauders will begin a best-of-three series on Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m., with another game on Friday at 1 p.m., and the if-necessary game is currently scheduled for 1 p.m. on Saturday. All game times are weather-permitting. Information on any game time changes will be communicated via wcupagoldenrams.com and all social media as it becomes available throughout the weekend.
Fan Information
For fans making the trip to Millersville this weekend, a Tournament Central page is available
here. Tickets are available for purchase now and should be purchased online via this
link. Prices are $10 for adults and $5 for students/seniors (55+), with children under 2 admitted free of charge.
For fans unable to make the trip, all games will stream on
NCAA Champs Pass. Search for "NCAA Champs Pass" in the app stores on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, and Android TV devices.
How They Got Here
West Chester (42-10) SCHEDULE ROSTER NEWS STATS
West Chester opened the NCAA Tournament batting .355 as a team, outscoring opponents 5-18 on the weekend, including a 23-2 advantage from the third inning through the fifth inning with a 13-0 lead in runs in the fourth inning after an 11-run fourth against East Stroudsburg last weekend. West Chester's visitors (Bloomsburg and East Stroudsburg) batted just .252 against the Golden Rams and were limited to six extra-base hits (three doubles and three home runs), while West Chester clubbed eight doubles, three home runs, and a triple, driving in 45 of the 51 runs the team scored. West Chester was also 10-for-10 on stolen base attempts on the weekend.
Millersville (39-16) SCHEDULE ROSTER NEWS STATS
After dropping three of four to West Chester to finish the regular season, including a doubleheader sweep in West Chester, Millersville has caught fire in the postseason, winning seven straight, including the PSAC Championship game behind 8.2 stellar innings from Rece Ritchey and three wins over Charleston (W.V.) (8-4), and 13
th-ranked Seton Hill (8-4, 8-3) last weekend in Millersville to return to the Super Regionals for the first time since 2023.
Flock Talk
In the Tournament last weekend,
Carter Rust (Liberty Township, Ohio/Lakota West) was blistering .571 (8-for-14) at the plate with two of the Golden Rams' three home runs and a double, along with eight runs and seven RBI.
Caleb Strawhecker (West Grove, Pa./Avon Grove) and
Christian Michak (Kingston, Pa./Wyoming Valley West) each picked up six hits and batted .545 on the weekend with eight RBI, while
Patrick Gozdan (Warminster, Pa./Archbishop Wood) scored a team-best 10 runs with seven walks, while picking up three hits to bat .429 on the weekend.
For the year, Strawhecker and Rust are first and second on the team in batting average at .360 and .345, with 15 home runs between two of them (eight and seven), along with 115 combined runs scored and 84 combined RBI. Strawhecker leads the team in runs with 60, while also driving in 42 runs.
Hunter Smith (Martinsburg, Pa./Central) is batting .348 with 16 doubles, six home runs, and three triples with 52 RBI, while
Austin Stalker (Wycombe, Pa./Council Rock North) is batting .427 with a team-best 10 home runs and 56 RBI, while also scoring 51 runs thanks in part to 14 doubles and four triples to go along with his team-leading 10 long balls.
On the mound,
Julian Costa (Mantua, N.J./Clearview) tied the Golden Rams single-season wins record on Thursday as he improved to 11-2 on the year and lowered his ERA to 2.76 and his batting average against to .252 with 69 strikeouts in 75 innings of work.
Kyle Lazer (Havertown, Pa./Msgr. Bonner & Prendie) battled through 6.2 innings to earn his seventh (7-1) win of the season on Friday as he enters Super Regionals with a 3.88 ERA and a .259 batting average against.
Drew Simpson (Hockessin, Del./DMA) and
Landen Rozich (Oxford, Pa./Oxford) continue to be two top-line arms for West Chester in relief as Simpson made his fourth scoreless appearance on Saturday to finish off the win over ESU, while Rozich pitched 2.2 important innings in that Saturday victory as well. Through 5.2 innings, Simpson has allowed just three walks and struck out 11, while Rozich has a record of 3-1 with three saves and a 2.11 ERA and a .215 batting average against with 28 strikeouts in 21.1 innings of work.
Nick Cugino (West Chester, Pa./Henderson) made a pair of appearances last weekend and enters the Super Regionals with a record of 2-0 with an ERA of 2.03 and a batting average against of .250 with nine strikeouts in 13.1 innings of work.
NCAA Tournament History
West Chester is now 52-40 (.565) in NCAA Tournament games in the Golden Rams' 22nd NCAA Tournament appearance and fourth under head coach
Mike LaRosa, who enters the weekend with an 11-10 career record in NCAA Tournament games. West Chester is making its second Super Regional appearance under LaRosa and second since the format changed to include Super Regionals in 2019, and is 2-1 in this round after taking two of three from East Stroudsburg in the 2022 Super Regionals.
Millersville is 35-23 in NCAA Tournament play and is making its second Super Regional appearance after also advancing to the Supers in 2023, when the team went 2-0 against Seton Hill to return to the National Finals for the fifth time in program history and the first time since 2016, when the team made it to the National Championship game before falling to Nova Southeastern twice.
A Good Sign
West Chester is 3-0 to open the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017, which was also the Golden Rams' last National Championship after hoisting the trophy in Grand Prairie, Texas, after a 9-0 win over UC-San Diego. Before 2017, the last time West Chester started the NCAA Tournament 3-0 was 2012, which also ended in a National Championship, the team's first, in Cary, North Carolina, with a 9-0 win over Delta State.
Get Ahead Early
West Chester is 23-1 when scoring in the first inning and 24-2 when scoring first, both of which improved on Saturday when
Carter Rust gave West Chester a 1-0 lead just two pitches into the game with a solo home run off the scoreboard in left field.
Six or More
West Chester is next to impossible to beat when its bats are hot, as the Golden Rams are 34-1 when scoring six or more runs and 33-1 when out-hitting their opponent, while going just 8-9 when scoring five runs or less.
We Are Honored
With the first weekend of NCAA Tournament play complete, All-Region squads have started to be announced, with the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) and Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) releasing their All-Region squads in the last few days. Costa has been named Atlantic Region Pitcher of the Year by both entities and was joined by Smith as a Second Team selection on both squads, while Strawhecker was a First Team selection by D2CCA.
Rank and File
West Chester climbed to seventh in the latest American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) poll, which was released on Tuesday morning. Millersville is ranked 19
th, while Colorado Mesa is the top-ranked team in the nation with a 52-5 record, followed by Tampa in second at 44-8.
Series History
West Chester maintains a 97-61 lead over Millersville in the all-time series, although since 2011, Millersville has a narrow 32-28 lead, including a win in the PSAC Championship game at Slippery Rock earlier this month. Millersville halted an 11-game winning streak for West Chester entering the final weekend of the regular season with a doubleheader split at Millersville to finish April, but West Chester responded quickly with a doubleheader sweep in West Chester to win the regular season series and a share of the PSAC East Regular Season title for the first time since 2018.
In NCAA Tournament action against Millersville, West Chester is 1-3 with its lone victory over the Marauders coming in the 2015 Regional Tournament when West Chester shut out the Marauders to begin the Tournament. In 2018, the two teams met again at the Regional Tournament in West Lawn, Pennsylvania, a game that Millersville won by a 7-6 final. The two sides also met at Millersville in 2023, which, up until last week, was the site of the Golden Rams' last NCAA Tournament win over Charleston (W.V.) to begin that Regional. Millersville took a pair of games from West Chester in this Tournament by 8-5 and 6-4 finals to advance to the Super Regionals and eventually the Division II Baseball National Finals. The two teams have never met in the Super Regional round.
Scouting Millersville
Offensively, Sammy Laux and Matthew Williams lead Millersville, batting .336 (51-for-152) and .328 (58-for-177), respectively. Laux has scored 31 runs and driven in 33 more with five doubles, three home runs, and a triple, while Williams has scored 49 runs and driven in 40 with 12 doubles, 10 home runs, and a triple of his own. Jimmy Kirk is batting just .274 on the season, but earlier this month joined an elite list of Marauders with 15 home runs in a single season. He has driven in 58 runs with nine doubles to go along with his 15 long balls, while also scoring 49 runs. Against West Chester earlier this season, Kirk is batting .231 with just three hits, but two of those three hits have been home runs.
On the mound, Millersville has a tall task ahead as the Marauders' pitching staff, which is pitching as well as anyone in Division II baseball as the season heads into Memorial Day weekend, will need to tame the Golden Ram offense, which averaged 17 runs over its three games last weekend, and won its three games by 33 total runs. Four frontline starters of Alex Kuehn (9-4, 4.81 ERA), Eli Simonton (6-2, 3.53 ERA), Matt Shamany (6-4, 3.13 ERA), and Ritchey (5-1, 3.00 ERA) will shoulder this load for Millersville as some combination of these four will likely start each game in the best-of-three series. Kuehn was the lone Marauder starter to earn a win in the regular season against West Chester, limiting the Golden Rams to just one hit in 5.2 scoreless innings. Ritchey also picked up a victory over the Golden Rams in the PSAC Tournament, scattering six hits and a run, while striking out seven in 8.2 innings of work. As a closer, Joe Morrissey is 5-1 with six saves and a 0.95 ERA with 57 strikeouts in 47.1 innings of work, while holding opponents to just a .188 batting average against.
With a Win
West Chester is in need of just two wins to return to the Division II Baseball National Finals for the first time since 2022 and win its sixth Atlantic Regional title. If West Chester can pick up these two victories, the Golden Rams will improve to 44 wins on the season and match the 2017 team squad for the fourth most wins in single-season history. The program record for wins in a season is 46, a mark which was achieved by both the 2009 and 2012 teams.
