Marietta College D3 Tournament Preview

After falling to Heidelberg in the OAC tournament, Marietta College received an at-large bid for the Division 3 Baseball Tournament.  This is the 34th time the Pioneers will be in the post-season in baseball.

Playing tonight at #4 Adrian College (Start time of 6:50 PM), the #3 Marietta Pioneers will begin the march into what is hopefully a long post-season.  While the Pioneers were unranked for most of the season nationally (they did finish with 10 votes, effectively making them the 35th best team in the nation), they finished with a ranking of 4th in the Mideast Region (but seeded third).  Comparitively, the other OAC team in the tournament (Heidelberg) was ranked #4 in the nation, #1 in the region.

Adrian College was not ranked nationally, but was ranked 6th in the Mideast Region (receiving a #4 seed for the tournament).

The Mideat Region plays in Adrian, Michigan this year, and like the rest of Division 3, features a Double-elimination format.

If Marietta wins tonight’s game, they will play Thursday at 7 PM against the winner of the Wooster/Concordia (Ill.) match-up.  If MC loses, they play at 3:30 PM tomorrow against the winner of the Heidelberg/Rose-Hulman match-up.  Past that, the tournament gets much more cloudy.  But I’ll keep you updated as the tournament progresses.

D3Baseball.com is looking at Heidelberg to advance, but sees Adrian as a possible upset special for the second year in a row.  Hopefully Marietta can put something together here in the post-season.

All Marietta College games can be heard tonight anywhere in the world thanks to an online stream off of the Marietta Athletics site.  There would be two streams if school was still in session, but oh well.