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Augie baseball to play in NCAA tournament

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By Eric Page | Monday, May 12, 2008 10:54 PM CDT | () comments

Greg Wallace got some good news Monday.

He already knew Augustana College was hosting an NCAA baseball regional. He just didn’t know his team would be playing in it.

The Vikings will be, having received an at-large berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament, which gets under way Wednesday at Swanson Stadium in Moline.

“It’s definitely a benefit to be at home,” Wallace said. “Knowing we were going to host, you’ve got to feel good about getting an at-large berth and being able to participate in the tournament.”

The Vikings (32-11) are the No. 3 seed in the regional. College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin regular-season and tournament champion Illinois Wesleyan (33-9) comes in as the top seed, while Wisconsin-Stevens Point (28-14) is the No. 2. Wartburg, Linfield and Webster round out the field with the winner advancing to the Division III World Series May 23-27 in Appleton, Wis.

Augie plays Wartburg (26-13), the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s regular-season and tournament champion at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

“They’re a strong team,” Wallace said. “They’ve got a couple good pitchers that they can come out with to start the tournament, and I think they’ll probably play in some low-scoring games.”

The Vikings (32-11), ranked No. 14 in the nation by d3baseball.com, lost to Carthage in the semifinals of the CCIW Tournament on Friday. Six of their 11 losses this season came at the hands of Wesleyan and Carthage, which will open its NCAA Tournament at the Wisconsin-Oshkosh regional site.

This is the second straight season the CCIW has landed three teams in the tournament field — the same three teams. Last year, Augie came up a game shy of the World Series, falling to Carthage in the regional final. The Vikings never have been to a World Series.

“We knew we had a lot of guys coming back, and we felt good about our chances to get back to this point,” Wallace said. “We hit a few bumps along the way, but our overall body of work was enough to convince the committee that we should be in.

“I think anybody in this tournament can walk away with it. It’s a pretty balanced regional, and our guys will be confident going up against any one of those teams.”

Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.