May 27, 2017 - With two teams eliminated Saturday, the Division III World Series is down to six teams, including the Concordia-Chicago Cougars after they stayed alive with a 9-4 win over Oswego State. The Cougars will continue on their quest to win Pool A as they face Roanoke (VA) College on Sunday morning at 10:00. If CUC wins, they will get ready for a 4:30 game against Washington & Jefferson with the opportunity to force a play-in game on Monday in hopes of winning the pool and advancing to the final best-of-three series against the winner of Pool B.
Of course, the Cougars cannot look ahead too far but must focus on beating Roanoke (34-18). The Maroons took down Oswego State 8-7 on Friday before falling to Washington & Jefferson 11-1 on Saturday afternoon. In that game, the Maroons grabbed an early 1-0 lead, but the Presidents came back in the fourth with three runs on a pair of homers. W & J scored in each of their final five at-bats to pull away to the easy victory.
Roanoke hits .304 as a team, led by outfielder Sean Guida at .344. The Maroons' power hitter is infielder Collier Donald with five homers and 44 RBIs. Unusually, Roanoke has two of the top three in Division III in triples, with Will Decker having 11 and Guida 10. The team's pitching staff sports a 4.97 ERA. The Maroons' number one starter pitched on FRiday, and it is expected that CUC will see one of three lefty pitchers.
The Cougars (34-12) pounded out 14 hits in their win on Saturday with
Brent Spohr, Mitch Wilson and
Brendan Klein all collecting three. Spohr and Wilson also had three RBIs apiece while combining with
Joe Silva for a 7-13 day for the 2-3-4 part of the order. Defensively, head coach
Mike Stawski praised freshman shortstop
Aaron Wicker, who played shortstop in the absence of
Bryan VanDuser and had a hand in seven of the putouts (3-4). On the pitching side,
Cody Caballero battled through six innings to earn the win, while
Alex Meyers and
Petar Arbov provided the relief help.
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Links to the game are available on the Gameday page and the schedule page.Â
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