MAGNOLIA, Ark. – No. 29 Southern Arkansas has earned its fifth consecutive post-season trip to NCAA Division II regional baseball tournament play and is set to open Thursday in the South Central Region tournament on the campus of fifth-ranked and No. 1 seed Central Missouri at Crane Stadium-Tompkins Field in Warrensburg, Mo.
Pairings have been set with the Muleriders (36-15) earning the fourth seed and facing 16th-ranked and No. 3 seed Angelo State (Texas) (40-15) in the final first round game at 7 p.m. central.
Thursday’s game will be SAU’s second meeting this season and fourth overall with the Rams. They tossed a 7-0 shutout at ASU February 10 in Magnolia during the annual Mulerider Classic for a 3-0 advantage in the all-time series. Angelo State received an automatic bid as champions of the Lone Star Conference.
Despite winning the inaugural Great American Conference championship last week in Enid, Okla., Southern Arkansas had to receive an at-large berth to the South Central regional and wasn’t eligible as an automatic qualifier due to the GAC being in its provisional season as a new conference in Division II.
The remainder of the region field and other first round games Thursday includes Heartland Conference champion third-ranked and No. 2 seed St. Mary’s (Texas) (44-8) taking on No. 5 Texas A&M-Kingsville (31-16) at 11 a.m., followed by top-seeded and Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) champion Central Missouri (44-7) squaring off against 24th-ranked and No. 6 St. Edward’s (Texas) (35-14) at 3 p.m., with the SAU-Angelo State game concluding the first round at 7 p.m. All times are central.
Southern Arkansas is playing in its fifth consecutive regional tournament and seventh overall in the past nine years. Prior to this year, they had never been seeded lower than third, that being in 2004 when they reached the championship game of the South Central Region tournament at Delta State in Cleveland, Miss. The Muleriders advanced to the semi-finals as the second seed of the South Central region tournaments in both 2006 at Abilene Christian in Abilene, Texas, and again at Delta State in 2008.
In their first year in the South Region in 2009, they hosted the regional tournament in Magnolia as the No. 1 seed and again made the semi-finals, were the No. 1 seed in the South in 2010, losing in the championship game in Tampa, Fla., to host Tampa, and made their earliest exit ever last year in dropping their first two games as the No. 2 seed in the South in Pensacola, Fla.
A South Central Regional tournament page will be located on the Central Missouri athletics website (www.ucmo.edu/athletics) by Monday afternoon, and will also be linked on the SAU athletic website at www.muleriderathletics.com.
Other regional tournament information can be found on the NCAA website at the following link: http://www.ncaa.com/news/baseball/article/2012-05-13/selections-named-championship