May 9, 2018 - Can any CUC baseball fan remember a season quite like the 2018 season? The answer has to be "no" because, quite frankly, there has never been a season like this one. And yet, after this regular season is now in the books, the Concordia-Chicago Cougars are in a familiar place - heading to the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference tournament at Kapco Park in Mequon, WI with a regular-season title (in this case, sixth) under their belts, hoping to advance to an NCAA III Regional tournament.

Mike Stawski, CUC's third-year head coach, can appreciate this year's regular-season crown because of what the team has gone through to get to this point. "We lost one of our top arms (Adam Gregory) who did not get to pitch an inning in conference. Mitch Wilson and Bryan VanDuser missed a bunch of conference games. We had guys playing out of position, and the weather played havoc with our schedule  So for us to go through all of that and come out on top again, that's a very rewarding feeling."

The Cougars (29-10, 15-5 NACC), on the basis of their overall play and strength of schedule, have ranked among the nation's top teams for the entire season. Currently, they are #10 in the D3Baseball.com poll and #11 in the American Baseball Coaches Association. They also come into the tournament as the number one team in the Midwest Region. All these factors seem to pave the way for a regional bid for the Cougars if they do not earn the automatic bid for winning the NACC tournament. Not that the Cougars plan for that to happen, however.

"We rely on our seniors at this time of year, because they have been here before and know what it's all about," said Stawski. "It's also a case of this run that our program is on with winning a conference title, going to a regional, nobody wants to be part of the group that ends that streak. So we know that everyone will be focused, our young players will learn from the example of our veterans, and we'll all be doing what it takes to keep this going."

By virtue of earning the number one seed in the tournament, the Cougars will wait to find out their opponent for Thursday's game. The results of the first two games on Thursday will determine whether that opponent is #4 Aurora University, #5 Benedictine University or #6 Concordia University Wisconsin. But regardless of who is in the opposing dugout at 7:00, Stawski promises one thing: "Some teams come here and try to figure out ahead of time how they can win the tournament. We're not thinking about that. We're thinking about how to win Thursday's game. We'll focus everything on this one and then, when it's over, we'll start to figure out the next game. But right now, we're just thinking about 7:00 Thursday night." 

Links to live stats and video can be found on the baseball schedule page and live game coverage tab at www.cucougars.com. Fans can also go to the official tournament page for additional information, including live coverage of all tournament games and updated brackets as they happen.