May 12, 2018 - It is already common knowledge what an unusual season this has been for baseball, not only for the Concordia-Chicago Cougars but for several teams in the Midwest. After losing game one of the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference tournament to Aurora University on Thursday night, CUC knew it would have to win five consecutive games to claim the tournament title. A rain day on Friday then made this a two-day task, including the prospect of playing three games on Sunday alone. But now, having won their two games on Saturday, would it not be fitting for the Cougars to pull off this five-game feat in a year such as this?

Concordia-Chicago head coach Mike Stawski, whose next win will be number 100 at CUC, has seen this before. "In 2012, when I was at Spalding (University in Louisville, KY). we had this same situation where we had to win three games in one day, so I've been there. And I think that this team has more talent, some older, more experienced guys, so we're just going to try and win that first game against MSOE and go from there."

Sunday will start early for the Cougars as they take on the MSOE Raiders at 8 a.m. A win over MSO would move CUC to the championship round where they would meet Aurora University. Since Aurora is the lone undefeated team in the tournament to this point, the Cougars would have to beat the Spartans twice, while Aurora has two chances to win one. Each game in the championship round would start 30 minutes after its preceding game is finished.

The Cougars are confident that they have the pitching to accomplish their task, particularly after strong outings on Saturday from Brian Musielak (seven innings) ad Cole Carman (eight innings). Stawski has several options for Sunday, some of which include Cody Caballero, Adam Schmitt, Noah Dressler, Cade Laudenschlager and James Grassl. In addition, Alex Meyers was not used on Saturday, so he will be available out of the bullpen if needed. And, needless to say, closer Mike Formella will be ready to pitch in any and all games if called upon.

Offensively, the Cougars will hope to put up runs in the manner that they did when they faced their opponents in the regular season. The Cougars defeated the Raiders 9-1 and 13-1 back on April 14 and swept the Spartans 9-2 and 6-4 on April 28.

Links to live stats and video can be found on the CUC athletics website at www.cucougars.com/