Saints Headed Back To Whitewater For Playoffs

May 14, 2012

Northland Sports Online

The St. Scholastica baseball team is headed to its eighth straight NCAA Tournament and for the third year in a row the Saints will be playing in Whitewater, Wis. where they will open up with North Park University (Ill.).

The 56-team tournament field was announced early Monday morning. The Saints were one of the 38 teams to receive an automatic bid. There are eight regional tournaments with four involving eight teams and four involving six teams. All of the regionals are double-elimination format with the winners of the eight regional tournaments advancing to the national tournament in Appleton, Wis.

For the first time the Saints will be competing in an eight-team NCAA Regional, which will now span five days. The last time CSS competed in a NCAA Regional that was more than six teams was at the 2006 Wisconsin Rapids Regional, where seven-teams competed.

The Saints are the No. 6 seed in the regional, while North Park, who received the automatic qualifier for winning the College Conference of Wisconsin and Illinois (CCIW) Tournament, is the No. 3 seed. The Vikings were also the CCIW regular season champions.

The top seed in the regional is the University of St. Thomas. St. Thomas won the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) regular season title. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is the No. 2 seed. The Eagles won both the regular season and tournament championship of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC).

The host, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, is the No. 4 seed. The Warhawks received one of the 18 at-large bids. Concordia University-Chicago is the No. 5 seed. The Cougars also received an at-large bid out of the Northern Athletics Conference (NAC). The regular season and tournament NAC champion, Aurora University (Ill.), is the No. 7 seed. The No. 8 seed belongs to St. Norbert College, who won the Midwest Conference Tournament championship.

This will be the first-ever meeting between the Saints and Vikings. North Park University is located in Chicago.

CSS enters the regional tournament with a 33-9 record and have won 12 straight and 27 of its last 28 games. The only loss in that stretch came in a doubleheader split in Whitewater against the Warhawks.

All of the action will take place at Prucha Field at James B. Miller Stadium on the campus of UW-Whitewater.

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