NAPERVILLE, Ill. – The Carthage College Red Men saw their College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Tournament run come to an end on Friday, as the Red Men dropped two in the double-elimination tournament, first falling to North Central College and then to North Park University.
The pair of losses drops the Red Men, who entered the weekend as the number-two seed, to 31-12 on the season.
"We played terrible today and we haven't done that all year, but today we played a pair of close games that got away with our defense letting us down and made a ton of errors. We just played bad," said head coach Augie Schmidt following the games. "It looked like we had the weight of the world on our shoulders and I don't know if we were thinking about Regionals, but for some reason we just didn't play well and the teams we played took advantage of our mistakes. It's a tough conference but that is why it makes you feel so good when you do have success, because it is hard."
North Central 15, Carthage 4
After falling behind in the second inning 3-0 and an added run by the Cardinals in the third to make it 4-0, the Red Men finally came to life in the fourth. After three hitless innings for North Central's Austin Polezoes, the Red Men took advantage of a hit by pitch and an error when
Vince Schwartz singled to score
Ryan Kramer. After another hit by pitch to load the bases,
Ryan Dalton singled to right to score
Nick Pierce and a bases loaded walk to
Ben Levicki drove in Schwartz.
The Red Men completed the comeback in the fifth after once again loading the bases; Schwartz lined a ball down the third base line that scored Kramer. Unfortunately for the Red Men a vicarious bounce only allowed the rest of the base runners to move up one base, keeping the game tied at 4-4.
North Central regained the lead in the home half of their fifth and then took advantage of multiple Red Men errors in the sixth to score six runs in the inning, including three unearned, to open the Cardinal lead up to 12-4.
Three runs in the seventh ended the game in which the Red Men were held to just four runs on six hits, while North Central score 15 times on 17 hits.
North Park 8, Carthage 3
Errors proved much more costly in game two, which closed the book on the Red Men's CCIW Tournament, despite a strong pitching performance from freshman
Matt Willett. The righty was dominant in his seven innings of work, allowing just two runs, both unearned, and forcing the Vikings to strand 11 base runners in the no decision.
Carthage opened the scoring with an unearned run from
Nick Pierce on a wild pitch in the second and regained the lead in the sixth on a sacrifice fly from
Joe Sisk and RBI double by
Ryan Dalton to put the Red Men up 3-2.
Things fell apart for the Red Men however in the eighth as North Park scored six runs on four hits and a pair of errors to take a commanding 8-3 lead late. For the game, the errors couldn't have come at a worse time, as Carthage committed a season high six in the loss.
The Red Men will now have to wait and see if their 2018 resume is strong enough to punch a ticket into the 2018 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship. The tournament field will be announced on Monday.
Looking back on 2018 Schmidt said, "Looking at the overall picture, who would have thought this team would win 31 games? It's unbelievable after being picked to finish fourth in the conference, we had a great year that put us back on the map, got ranked, did a lot of great things. So as a coach it was one of the more gratifying seasons that I have ever had and I have had 31 of them. This will be one that stands out due to so many good surprises. It was a great year and it's just too bad that it ended like this."
