May 5, 2008

Malone Baseball To Host NAIA Region IX Tournament This Week

The Malone College baseball team, led by fifth-year head coach Tom Crank, will host the NAIA Region IX Tournament Wednesday, May 7th through Friday, May 9th at Thurman Munson Stadium.
 
The Pioneers, ranked 22nd in the most recent NAIA national poll, concluded the regular season with a 36-11 overall record and a 21-5 mark in American Mideast Conference play.  Malone had entered the weekend in second place in the AMC standings but due to Ohio Dominican University’s two losses at Urbana University on Sunday afternoon, Malone jumped ahead of ODU to claim the AMC Regular-Season Championship. 
 
The field for the double-elimination tournament will consist of finishers one through four in the final AMC regular-season standings and all games will be slated for nine innings.  Top-seeded Malone (36-11 overall, 21-5 AMC) will face off against #4 seed Urbana (27-19 overall, 16-10 AMC) in game one on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m.  Game two will follow at 1:00 p.m. with second-seeded Ohio Dominican (34-13 overall, 20-5 AMC) taking on #3 seed Mount Vernon Nazarene University (30-16 overall, 17-9 AMC).  The losers of games one and two will then wrap up Wednesday’s action (in a game three) at 4:00 p.m.  The tournament continues with two games on Thursday afternoon and will conclude with the championship game on Friday (see below for a complete listing of games and times).
 
The NAIA Region IX Tournament Champion advances to the NAIA Super Regional where it will face the NAIA Region X Champion in a best-of-three playoff series with a berth in the NAIA World Series up for grabs.
 
Wed.    10:00 a.m. - (Game 1) #1 Malone vs. #4 Urbana
           1:00 p.m.    - (Game 2) #2 Ohio Dominican vs. #3 Mt. Vernon Nazarene
            4:00 p.m.    - (Game 3) Loser Game 1 vs. Loser Game 2  
Thu.     10:00 a.m.   - (Game 4) Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2
            1:00 p.m.    - (Game 5) Winner Game 3 vs. Loser Game 4
Fri.       1:00 p.m.    - (Game 6) Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5
            4:00 p.m.    - (Game 7) if necessary (only if the one-loss team wins Game 6 since it is a
                                                double elimination event)
Sat.      Rain date if needed
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