Milwaukee Clinches, Rest of Field Up for Grabs

INDIANAPOLIS – The Milwaukee Panthers captured the Horizon League baseball regular season last weekend with a three-game sweep of visiting Youngstown State – but just a week away from the conference championship, the rest of the field is yet to be decided.

The middle of the five-team pack got a serious shake up over the weekend as UIC (24-25, 11-10 HL) put together an impressive series and earned a three-game sweep over visiting Valparaiso (25-26, 10-11 HL) to take over second place in the standings.  Now, both Wright State (21-26, 8-10 HL) and Youngstown State (14-38, 8-13 HL) will go into the final weekend of the regular season looking to play spoiler and gain some momentum heading into next week’s Horizon League tournament.

The Raiders may be in the best position to influence the standings as they host UIC. Wright State has picked up 10 wins at the recently renovated Nischwitz Stadium and the Flames are just 8-14 on the road this season, including 4-5 in conference play. When the two teams faced off in Chicago last month, Wright State took two games in the three-game set.

UIC has momentum on its side, however, and will likely have Co-Horizon League Pitcher of the Week Tomas Michelson on the mound to start the series. Michelson threw his first career complete game shutout last Friday night against the Crusaders, striking out five. Wright State, meanwhile, has gone 1-3 against non-conference opponents since its last Horizon League matchup.

If the Flames can take two out of three in Dayton, UIC will earn the No. 2 seed for the Horizon League tournament. Even if Valpo sweeps the Penguins, UIC holds the head-to-head advantage in the regional rivalry thanks to last weekend’s sweep and two wins last month in Valparaiso.

The Flames certainly can’t rest on their laurels, though. A Crusader sweep this weekend is certainly within the realm of possibility as Youngstown State is just 8-22 on the road this season and Valpo owns a 13-2 record at Emory G. Bauer Field, 7-2 in conference play including a three-game sweep of the first-place Panthers.

While both Valparaiso and Youngstown State lost three conference games over the past weekend, the Crusaders recovered on Tuesday evening to earn a 6-1 win at home against Toledo. Freshman Jake Hanson had two RBI in the game while Kyle Wormington allowed just one run and struck out seven in 7.2 innings of work. YSU, meanwhile, fell 5-3 at home against Canisius on Tuesday afternoon.

With Valpo needing a sweep and two UIC losses (or to go 2-1 and for the Raiders to sweep UIC) to reclaim second place, the Crusaders will no doubt be Wright State’s biggest supporters this weekend, with the same going for UIC pulling for Youngstown State.

No team can forget to focus on its own series, however. In baseball, anything is possible. And in the unlikely event that both Wright State and Youngstown State pull off sweeps, the Raiders would becoming the new No. 2, while UIC’s tiebreaker advantage over the Penguins would put the Flames No. 3 and Valparaiso would fall all the way to fifth place.

Standings and momentum will be important next weekend at the Horizon League tournament as No. 1 Milwaukee (28-19, 14-7 HL) will have both – along with an extra weekend of rest.

The Panthers played their final regular season games Tuesday night, earning a doubleheader sweep of Northern Illinois. Milwaukee now has a chance to rest all of its players, most importantly the pitchers. With the Horizon League’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament decided across a span of four or five days, pitching is always at a premium during the conference championship.

That’s not to say Milwaukee couldn’t fare well even if facing a heavy amount of adversity, though. The Panthers managed to clinch the regular season title despite inclement weather forcing them to spend almost the entire season on the road.

Even the first “home” game of the season wasn’t, as the Panthers won a non-conference game against Northwestern at Miller Park, home of the Brewers. Milwaukee finally played its first game at Henry Aaron Field on April 25, a non-conference win over Carroll.

The Panthers then went on to win each of the remaining 12 games at Henry Aaron Field, including three-game Horizon League sweeps of UIC and Youngstown State.

"It's a tremendous amount of work – I will tell you that much. It feels really good," Milwaukee head coach Scott Doffek said in a release by the school. "We have had to deal with an unbelievable amount of adversity all year with the schedule and the weather and the lack of practice. I am really happy for those guys – they really deserve it. They didn't give in to any of it and never felt sorry for themselves. It's just a really good team – a great group of kids that really love each other and work hard and it's really rewarding to see them be successful."

The Panthers shrugged off everything their opponents and Mother Nature threw at them this season. Now, they can now sit back, rest up and await an opponent.