OWU beats Capital last night. 5-4. OWU used a bunch of Bench guys who had not seen much playing time during the year. They did well. Nice to see Seffermick (Fr) go 5 innings with 3 earned runs on 7 hits. He hadn't seen a start or innings since Florida.

I think Capital has an outside chance of getting into THe OAC tourney. They play 2 Against Heidi on Saturday, so I cannot be sure if we saw there best pitching. I have to imagine that we were seeing their regular lineup though.

A lot of good performances from some young bishops.

Ouch.  JCU 

Wooster eeks out 'Berg in extras. 

Last weekend coming up...Prediction time.

Biggest Series of the weekend:  Otterbein and BW-Otterbein needs at least one in this series.  BW is playing for pride as their season ends Saturday.  Both of these teams were very erratic on offense when I saw them.  Their pitching was adequate.  BW's defense left much to be desired.  Toughey and Meadows are legitimate candidates for POY in the league.  If Otterbein gets swept they could still get in to the tournament but will have to do some scoreboard watching along the way.  I think both were a bit inflated by early season cupcake schedules, and I'm not sure there is a big difference between either.  My prediction....BW takes two in Westerville.

Marietta and Wilmington.  Marietta could (not saying they will) save their top arms for CWRU on Saturday and still win handily.  Marietta sweeps with little trouble.
JCU and Northern.  Dorring and O'Brien are en fuego on the hill.  Northern may not score more than 2 runs in 16 innings against those two.  JCU wins two.
Mount and Muskingum.  Mount must win one to clinch their spot for next weekend. Noticed where Muskinum scored 22 runs against Ohio Wesleyan.  They are bipolar, but mostly not particularly good.  Mount does its job and wins two.
Heidelberg and Capital.  Both teams are 7-9 in league play.  If either wants any chance to make the tournament, they have to win two games.  It is really unfortunate that the injury bug bit 'Berg as hard as it did.  I really thought they would be a serious contender to be hosting next weekend.  'Berg has too much pitching depth, and cap is not particularly strong offensively.  Heidelberg get's a chance to sneak in the back door, but will end up finishing their season on Saturday.  Heidelberg sweeps.

I agree they are not particularly good. Not that we are any better right now, not saying that we deserved this loss.
Here comes the BUT,
The pitchers they faced are not particularly tough, almost the same group that Cap faced last week. There era is as follows
 8.57   
 5.40       
 6.00   
 6.75
Some with limited innings. We rare throw a weekend starter on Weds games. Day two starters may get some innings tonight. It is possible we could have been more competitive if we had used other pitchers. I said it earlier. Where pitching was going to be a strength early in the year it has now become a weakness and we just are not deep enough.
Congrats to Muskingum.

Yes the UAA has a tournament in the spring
University of Rochester, Case, Emory, Bradies and  Washington U go down south and play. Chicago does not participate because there spring break is a different date than the other UAA schools.

Wash U and Case shared the title.

http://www.uaa.rochester.edu/weekly_sport_updates/BB_Update.html

I do not believe this is about giving more teams exposure to the tournament. I don't like this much either. That's why I prefer a round robin instead of two divisions. There is a perceived imbalance between east and west divisions. For a long time their has been a belief in the west that the best four teams have not been in the tournament. I am not saying that Wooster did not belong, but that the second seed in the east may not have been as good as the third in the west. Many in the west consider it a tougher road. We do not have the likes of Hiram. And Oberlin is having their best year with 18 wins. And then replacing Earlham with Depauw, really tipped the scales. Can any body argue that the two divisions are balanced?
Round robin was only tried one year. I think this was put in place to try and even that balance.

Etta,
I do not believe it was JCU's decision. When Hiram Kenyon was postponed on Sunday, Hiram had to cancel with JCU to complete the games against Kenyon. I think Kenyon insisted because if they take two more from Hiram they are tied for third in the east. This is big because it is the difference of playing Denison or Witt in the cross over to get to the NCAC tournament.

North Coast Conference

I am not sure what is going on with the NCAC tournament race, apparently I am confused about the meaning of their crossover games scheduled for the upcoming weekend.  I'm trying to get clarification as to what it means for their conference tournament and implications on their Pool A births.

East:
Wooster 12-3 (#4 in region)
Allegheny 9-6
Oberlin 9-7
Kenyon 7-7
Hiram 0-14

West
Denison 10-6
Wittenberg 8-8
OWU 8-8
DePauw 8-8
Wabash 6-10

I'm trying to clarify what is going on with the crossover games for the weekend.  But the matchups (according to Bishop Lefties Dad) are:  #1W Denison vs. 4E Kenyon, 2W Depauw vs 3E Oberlin, 3W OWU vs 2E Allegheny, 4W Wittenberg vs. 1E Wooster.  According to the same poster, these are best of three series with the winners advancing on to the NCAC tournament.

Wooster went 2-2 last week in region, losing a key game to Marietta (#1 in region).
Denison went 3-1 in region and had their game vs. Case cancelled.

Key non-conference, in region matchups this week:

Dension vs. #1 Marietta
#4 Wooster vs. #9 JCU

I had the tie breakers wrong. The west is set for seeding the cross overs.
1. Denison
2. Witt
3. Depauw
4. OWU
5. Wabash

The east still needs to make up some games. Only seedings set are Wooster at 1 and Hiram at 5. Just need  to finish the games to seed the rest.

All my posts may be for naught. Currently Woosters and OWU's schedule has Wooster vs OWU in the cross over. That would mean OWU finished fourth. Not all the schedules are updated so who knows. My guess is they are still arguing over the results. Nothing is final till the weekly release and the schedule is updated on NCAC's sight.

OWU and Kenyon would also have been done.
Yeah I agree. I would like to see round robin again. Maybe this can make it happen. This is how it was explained to me but everyone knows how closed the NCAC is with tiebreakers etc.... So I only have so much faith in this till I see it posted by the NCAC.

I remember in Football last year no one could get an answer on the tie breakers form the NCAC, but it all worked it self out.