Tag Archives: NCAA Division III

11 May

majors to play on

Only 14 at-large bids to the NCAA Division III Tournament were handed out. Millsaps got one. The Majors (28-12) will play in the West Regional, which starts Wednesday at Tyler, Texas. The regional features four conference champions, including host UT-Tyler, 34-10 out of the American Southwest. The Majors’ chances of getting a regional bid appeared slim when they were eliminated at home by Rhodes in the tournament phase of the Southern Athletic Association postseason. Rhodes and SAA regular season champ Birmingham-Southern also made the 56-team NCAA field. Under longtime coach Jim Page, Millsaps has made several regional appearances and reached the D-III College World Series in 2013. League player of the year Keith Shumaker leads the current club, hitting .395 and posting an 8-2, 2.39 pitching ledger. Isaac Glenn also had a huge year, batting .446 with four homers and 44 RBIs, and William Chenoweth hit .366 with five bombs. Smokey Ethridge (5-4, 2.35) is the Majors’ No. 2 starter. Another stat worth knowing: Millsaps is 6-6 away from home this season.

23 Apr

ready or not

In a much different position than it was in a year ago, Millsaps College starts postseason play on Friday. The fourth-seeded Majors (21-16 after scoring 27 runs in a two-game sweep at Oglethorpe over the weekend) play 5-seed Hendrix in one of the two four-team pods in the Southern Athletic Association Tournament. Also in Millsaps’ bracket are No. 1 seed (and pod host) Birmingham-Southern and 8-seed Sewanee. The survivors from the double-elimination pods meet in a best-of-3 series for the conference title. Millsaps won both the regular season and postseason championships in 2013 en route to the NCAA Division III World Series. Keith Shumaker beat Birmingham-Southern in the title clincher at Twenty Field last May. The preseason All-American is still around, sporting a 5-1, 2.39 pitching ledger and a .344 batting average. But Shumaker and the Majors have their work cut out for them in their quest to repeat as league champs and return to the D-III regionals.

07 Apr

blame it on the rain

The threat of more wet weather on Tuesday has prompted Mississippi College and Millsaps to postpone their scheduled Maloney Trophy Series clash in Clinton to April 29. Tough break. One imagines that both teams were eager to get back on the field. Millsaps swept a doubleheader from NCAA Division III nationally ranked Rhodes on Saturday to improve to 16-15 (6-8 in the Southern Athletic Association). MC swept a pair from D-III nationally ranked Concordia-Texas on Saturday to improve to 14-12 (12-9 in the American Southwest Conference). The Choctaws, ineligible for the ASC postseason as they transition to D-II, have won nine of 10 games as they chase a bid to the National Christian College Athletic Association regionals. Marty Stringfellow (.383), Spencer Wilson (.333) and Robbie Jernigan (.322) have been hot hitters for MC, and Blake Mcilwain (4-1, 3.43 ERA) and Brooks Fortenberry (3-2, 2.19) have been stalwarts on the bump. But the heroes on Saturday were Zach Evans, who hit a two-run bomb in a 2-0 win over Concordia, and Jayme Monroe, who threw eight innings of one-hit ball in that game. They were named ASC player and pitcher of the week. For Millsaps, Keith Shumaker, who batted .470 with nine RBIs in four games last week, was selected as SAA player of the week. P.S. In MLB, Corey Dickerson, the former Meridian Community College standout, has been sent down by Colorado, while Tyler Moore, another MCC alum who also played at Mississippi State, is back up with Washington.