Cleburne, Texas - The #24 Centenary baseball team will face #2 Trinity in the opening game of the 2021 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Baseball Championship on Friday at 1 p.m. in a battle of the two of the nation's top teams in division III at The Depot at Cleburne Station.
The No. 4 seed Gents (30-9, 14-7 SCAC) and No. 1 seed Tigers (25-5, 12-2 SCAC) will be joined by No. 2 seed Texas Lutheran (25-11, 15-3 SCAC) and No. 3 seed Southwestern (18-17, 13-5 SCAC). The Bulldogs and Pirates will meet at approximately 4:30 p.m. following the Gents-Tigers matchup.
The tournament is a double-elimination format with three games scheduled for Saturday and the championship set for Sunday. Live stats and live video stream will be available for all tournament games. Live stats for Friday's game: https://scacsports.com/sports/bsb/2020-21/boxscores/20210507_awv3.xml. All games will be live streamed through the league's partnershp with Sportsgram.
Centenary lost two of three games at home to Texas Lutheran last weekend to end the regular season. The Gents fell in a doubleheader on Saturday, 14-4 and 8-4, after taking the series opener, 5-4, on Friday night. Saturday's setbacks were the first at home all season for the Maroon and White as they finished a superb 17-2 at Shehee Stadium this season. The gents, despite being the No. 4 seed in the tournament, lead the conference in overall wins and only TLU has won more conference games.
The Gents won 30 games in a season for just the second time in the division III era (2012-present) and 10th time in school history. They also set a D3 era single-season record for home wins (17) and won their first 16 at Shehee Stadium. They swept five opponents at home this season and are 20-3 in their last 23 home games dating back to the beginning of last season. The Maroon and White are 39-13 overall (20-3 home/15-9 away/4-1 neutral) overall since the start of the abbreviated 2020 season. Centenary has now reached double digits in conference wins every season but one since becoming a member of the SCAC prior to the 2013 season (conference games not played last season due to COVID-19).
Centenary is ranked for the eighth week in a row in the D3baseball.com/NCBWA poll, have been ranked as high as 14th in the poll this season. See the complete poll here: https://www.d3baseball.com/top25/2021/2021Top25-week-11
Centenary also won a program-record 18-straight games from March 4-April 6 as the Maroon and White amazingly went unbeaten for six-consecutive weeks and at the time owned the longest winning streak in the nation in division III. The Gents are just five wins away from matching the D3 era single-season program record of 35 games accomplished by the 2017 team which won the SCAC Championship and earned an NCAA Tournament berth. The Gents finished the regular season with single-digit losses for just the second time since 1967 (2017 the other occasion).
The Gents and Tigers will meet for the fourth time this season on Friday after Trinity claimed a series win April 24-25 in San Antonio. The Tigers won a pair of 9-6 games and then the Gents won a slugfest, 14-12 in the final game of the series. Centenary and Trinity rank in the top two or three in every major statistical team category and have individual players dominating the various individual categories.
The Gents and Tigers squared off three times in the 2017 tournament with Centenary winning two of three incuding a 13-3 win in seven innings in the title game to claim a SCAC title and clinch an NCAA Tournament berth.
For more information on the 2021 SCAC Baseball Tournament, click here for the official website.
A link to the Gents' complete 2021 schedule can be found here: https://www.gocentenary.com/sports/bsb/2020-21/schedule
#GoCentenary #CTheOpportunity
