Webber baseball wins first Sun Conference Tournament Championship
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (May 7, 2018) – One year after reaching the NAIA National Championship for the first time in school history in 2017, the Webber International University baseball team once again made history on Monday at the 2018 Sun Conference Baseball Championship inside FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches. The Warriors won their first Sun Conference Tournament Championship in their 25-year history, taking down No. 3 Saint Thomas University for the second time in two days, this time by a score of 1-0 in the winner-take-all second game of the day.
The game two masterpiece for the Warriors was anchored by senior pitcher
Juan Terron (8-2), who pitched the game of his life, shutting out the top-scoring team in all of the NAIA and holding them to only two hits.
Starting with one out in the third inning, Terron went on to retire 17 straight batters and pitch five consecutive 1-2-3 innings, finishing with six total perfect innings.
In the ninth, Terron did not let a leadoff walk faze him as he induced back-to-back fly outs followed by a grounder to
Chris Medina at third base to end it.
It was the lowest hit total Saint Thomas has had all season long after a previous season-low of five hits, and it was the first time the Bobcats have been shutout in 231 games (February 20, 2015), a streak spanning four seasons.
The Warriors also benefited from some nice defensive plays in the middle innings as
Napo Ballestero made a grab behind the plate while falling backwards in the fifth inning,
Jesse Coleman made a great diving catch crashing in hard from left field in the sixth inning, and in the seventh,
Manny Rodriguez made a nice running catch near the warning track.
As the two teams combined for only six hits through six innings, with
Alex Rodriguez accounting for the first two of Webber's four hits to that point while
Langston Provitt had the other two, Webber scrapped together what would go on to be the winning win in the bottom of the sixth with a two-out rally.
It all started with a two-out hit by pitch by
Quirino Esquivel, an infield hit by Provitt and a full-count walk by
Cristian Rivera to load the bases.
With Ballestero at the plate facing a 2-2 count, Saint Thomas' Tyler Morales threw a wild pitch that sent Esquivel racing home to get a run on the board.
"I'm very proud of this team," said Head Coach
Brad Niethammer. "They were not always an easy group to coach, but they are a good group of guys. I'm really proud of what they accomplished in this tournament, especially after losing game one. Winning would not be an easy task, and JD [
Juan Terron] threw an awesome game. We had several guys step up their game during this tournament. I'm just glad the seniors get to keep playing."
In the first game of the day, Webber struggled to hit and fell 11-0 as
Zak Spivy (6-7) allowed three runs on nine hits through the first four innings before a three-run fifth inning for the Bobcats. Conversely, the Warriors were held to only four hits through six innings, one each coming from the top four batters in the lineup, and finished with six hits in total and six walks as M. Rodriguez and
Marcus Begg each had two knocks.
The winner-take-all final game was a little different as Webber clinched its second straight trip to the NAIA National Championship. Provitt, one of Webber's most important players in the tournament, finished the championship game 3-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base.
Webber, the No. 5 seed in the tournament, saw its record move to 35-22 while Saint Thomas, the tournament's No. 1 seed, went to 53-7 as the Warriors kept the Bobcats one win away from tying their program-best single-season win total.
Being named to the all-tournament team for the Warriors was Begg, Coleman, Terron and Provitt.
In Webber's five games in the tournament, Begg finished with eight hits, a .444 batting average and a .556 slugging percentage. Coleman hit .375 with six hits and a team-high four runs batted in while also sporting a perfect 0.00 earned run average in 3.1 innings from the mound with one win and one save. Terron finished with a 1.64 ERA in 11 innings while earning the win in the tournament championship game, and Provitt hit .294 with five hits and three RBI's while hitting two home runs, one of which was a walk off winner on day two of the tournament in the bottom of the ninth inning against Florida Memorial University.
Also in the tournament, Terron was second among all pitchers with a .179 opponent's batting average.
Webber will now wait until Thursday, May 10, to see which five-team NAIA National Championship Opening Round pairing it will be sent to. The selection show will air at 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the
Play NAIA Facebook Page.
The Opening Round will then take place a week from Monday at nine different regional sites, starting on May 14 and lasting until Thursday, May 17.
