26 Home Games Set For Patriots…

A trip to Stillwater, Okla for a Feb. 21 game against Oklahoma State follows. The Cowboys return the trip to Dallas on May 15. OSU is one of four Big 12 teams Dallas Baptist will face during the 2012 season. The Patriots will also play home and home games with Texas, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. The Longhorns reached the College World Series in 2011, while Oklahoma advanced to Omaha in 2010.

DBU heads to Houston Feb. 24-26 for a three game series vs. Rice. An April 3 game across the Metroplex vs. TCU is among the Patriots’ other notable non-conference contests.

Dallas Baptist has been a DI Independent since the program’s inception, but will play in the Missouri Valley Conference in 2012. Conference play begins May 30-April 1 with a home series against Missouri State. Other conference home series are against Southern Illinois and Evansville. Conference road series are at Indiana State, Wichita State, Creighton, and Bradley.

2012 will be Dallas Baptist’s only season in the Missouri Valley Conference. Along with Cal State Bakersfield, DBU will join the WAC for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Dallas Baptist is coming off the most successful season in program history, after advancing to a Super Regional in 2011. All-American outfielder Jason Krizan was among  three Patriots taken in the 2011 MLB Draft when he went in the 8th round to the Detroit Tigers.

WAC Will Field 10 Baseball Programs In 2013…

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Golden Bears Take Game One From Dallas Baptist…

DBU's Brandon Williamson delivers the game's first pitch to Cal's Austin Booker.

The #3 seed Bears (36-21) dominated the #3 Dallas Baptist Patriots (42-19) 7-0 in Saturday’s Game-1 of the Santa Clara Super Regional at Stephen Schott Stadium.

The Bears received six strong innings from sophomore lefthander Justin Jones (9-6) and a pair of three-run home runs to give them the 1-0 lead in the best-of-three Super Regional.

“I was really happy with our starting pitching. Justin (Jones) was fantastic. He was in control the whole time he was in there,” Cal head coach David Esquer said. “The key with our team is to be able to play loose and in the moment.”

The Bears have become one of the great stories in college baseball this season. In late September, the school announced the program along with four other sports would be eliminated because of budget cuts.

Immediately following the announcement, private fundraising began to try and save the program, and in early April the school announced that enough private funds had been raised to save the team.

Now a win away from their first trip to Omaha since 1992, Cal has gone from a big story for all the wrong reasons to a big story for all the right reasons.

Cal seemed unfazed by the TV cameras, playing energized and loose from the start and feeding off the energy from the crowd.

“Couldn’t have asked for more from the home crowd. They came out and supported us. That was a big lift,” said Esquer.

The game was played 50 miles from Cal’s Berkeley campus at Santa Clara University, because both Cal and Dallas Baptist lacked the facility requirements to host NCAA Tournament games.

Cal's Chad Bunting (45) touches the plate after his three run home run.

Despite Cal being the designated road team on Saturday the standing-room-only crowd of 1,431 gave the club a big boost.

The atmosphere was something new to the Bears, who are not used to playing in front of such a big pro-Cal crowd.

“It was pretty awesome,” said Jones. “It’s not a normal thing over at Evans Diamond. To get this big of a crowd, to have everyone in it, backing us up – they are part of our team and it was wonderful.”

Jones allowed a single to Dallas Baptist star hitter senior rightfielder Jason Krizan (.419 average) in the top of the first, but he then retired 15 straight Patriots hitters before a 2-out walk in the 6th.

“In pregame, I felt pretty good. I just went out there and had all my stuff,” said Jones. “Once I had everything, they weren’t going to hit me. It takes confidence to be out there, and tonight I had tons of it.:

The only thing that stopped Jones was a bicep injury that occurred in warmups prior to the start of the bottom of the 7th. Jones immediately was taken out of the game and replaced by sophomore reliever Logan Scott.

Esquer said the Bears coaching staff erred on the side of caution when it came to removing Jones. “He experienced some tightness in his bicep, some discomfort, so we didn’t want to take any chances with that,” said the 12th-year Cal coach.

“We had it checked already, nothing structural with his shoulder or elbow, just muscle tightness in his bicep. Sowe’re going to test that further, and go from there.”

Jones threw only 75 pitches in six full innings allowing one hit, one walk with three strikeouts in the shutout outing.

Scott picked up where Jones left off, pitching the final three innings while allowing no runs and only two hits.

“It’s so important, because if someone comes in with a four-run lead and is a wreck, it can change the game,” Esquer said. “If the guy walks one or two guys, or if they pop [a home run], it’s a different game. So [for Scott] to be able to stabilize and take the baton from Justin and be rolling pretty good was big for us.”

Cal gave Jones and early lead to work with in the bottom of the 2nd.

After Patriots starter senior Brandon Williamson (10-4) began the game by setting down the first four Bear hitters he faced, a pair of sophomores – first baseman Devon Rodriguez and third baseman Mitch Delfino – reached on back-to-back singles. Junior rightfielder Chad Bunting followed the singles by launching a 3-run home run, his team-leading seventh, to left field to give Cal the 3-0 lead.

“He left a changeup over the middle part of the plate,” said Buning. “It was up a little bit. I was able to keep my hands back and put a good swing on it.”

Williamson did not find trouble again until the top of the 6th, when junior shortstop Marcus Semien ripped a triple down the rightfield line with one out. Semien scored on Rodriguez’s sacrifice fly, making it 4-0.

The Bears put the game away when Semien hit another 3-run home run, giving the Bears the final 7-0 cushion. Semien finished the game 2-for-4 with a triple, home run and 3 RBIs.

Williamson left after going 7.2 innings, allowing seven runs, 10 hits, a walk, and four strikeouts. He threw 118 pitches, with more than 80 of them going for strikes.

Dallas Baptist head coach Dan Heefner said he still felt good about Williamson’s performance.

“I thought Brandon threw really well though. He did what he’s done all year long for us, he competes,” said Heefner.

“He had us in the game for the majority of the game when he had us within four. But I even thought that the two home runs he gave up were decent pitches on his part.”

Cal also had two-hit games from Delfino, sophomore centerfielder Darrel Matthews and senior leftfielder Austin Booker.

The Pac-10 player of the year, sophomore Tony Renda, started as the team’s DH instead of second base, after hurting his quad scoring the game-winning run in Monday’s win over Baylor. Renda left the game for a pinch-runner in the 8th, after reaching on a dropped third strike.

Dallas Baptist, playing in the program’s first ever Super Regional, never created anything going on offense. The Patriots finished with only three hits and no player had multiple hits. Krizan was 1-for-4.

The Patriots had only one inning, the 9th, in which multiple runners reached base.

Heefner said Jones and his changeup were a reason for the Patriots’ struggles at the plate.

“[Jones] was throwing that for a strike and really dictating their timing up there, got to give him a lot of credit on that. I also thought he did make a few mistakes, he left some balls up, but we didn’t take advantage of those,” said the DBU coach.

Dallas Baptist came into the series with one of the top offenses in the country, sporting a .311 team batting average. They were shut out for the first time since March 12 at Washington.

The Cal-DBU matchup was billed as Cal’s pitching (2.88 team ERA) vs. the Patriots high-powered offense and Cal proved the cliche that good pitching beats good hitting.

Other than being a pitching vs. hitting series, the Super Regional has been dubbed the “Cinderella Super Regional” –  with two #3 Regional seeds playing each other in a Super Regional for the first time since 2007.

Other than facing the budget axe this season, Cal fought its way through the losers bracket to win in Houston last weekend. Cal won the regional on Monday vs. Baylor by rallying from a 7-1 deficit and scoring twice in the 8th and four more runs in the bottom of the 9th for a 9-8 win. Rodriguez was the hero of the game, with a 2-run blast in the 8th before singling in two more runs, with two outs and two strikes in the 9th.

Dallas Baptist, an independent that has played DI baseball since 2006, was making its second NCAA Tournament appearance (2008) in school history. The Patriots baseball team is the only program at DBU that plays at the Division I level.

The Patriots won the Ft. Worth regional last weekend, after going 3-1. They beat 2010 CWS participants Oklahoma and TCU before beating Oral Roberts on Monday to advance to play Cal.

Cal, which struggled down the stretch by finishing the regular season 12-13, now has won four games in a row. It’s the Bears longest winning streak since a five-gamer in mid-April.

The Patriots will need to get their offense going on Sunday if they want to keep their season alive.

“We didn’t do a great job of executing our plan up there but we’ll give [Jones] credit first on that,” said Heefner. “We definitely need to come out tomorrow and do a better job with that.”

The Cal contingent is stressing that it’s still too early to be thinking about Omaha.

“We can’t even think about that at this point,” Esquer said. “We’ve got a tough opponent on the other side that is going to play for their lives. We know what that’s like,” he said.

Game 2 is Sunday at 10 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. local time. DBU will start senior Jared Stafford (8-4, 3.03 ERA). Cal likely will go with junior ace Erik Johnson (6-4, 2.91).

__________________________________________

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Omaha Awaits One…

Cal players pose for a picture after their Houston Regional win.

In this year’s CWS, Cinderella will come out of the Santa Clara Super Regional in an unlikely matchup between the University of California and Dallas Baptist University. The best-of-three series begins Saturday.

Both Cal and Dallas Baptist have incredible stories of how they find themselves only two wins away from Omaha.

Cal’s story is well-known throughout the college baseball world. In late September, the university announced that baseball, along with four other sports, would be eliminated after the 2010-2011 school year. The announcement sent shockwaves through the sport. It appeared a Pac-10 program with two national titles to its credit and high expectations in 2011 would be gone after the season.

Immediately after the announcement, a fundraising effort was launched to save the sports that found themselves on the chopping block. Boosters raised $13 million by early February and the school announced three of the teams would remain following the school year. Baseball was not one of them, and school officials said it was unlikely the Bears would be reinstated despite continued fundraising efforts by the group “Save Cal Baseball.”

Instead of the players looking to transfer, the baseball team came together and embarked on a mission to make 2011 memorable for on-field achievements. Players on head coach David Esquer’s squad had the option to transfer before this season, but all of them decided to stick with Cal and wait to transfer after 2011 if reinstatement did not occur.

On April 8, Cal baseball finally got the news it was waiting to hear. The fundraising effort to save the program had raised $9 million, enough to keep the program going in the future.

At the time of the announcement, Cal was ranked #13 and sported a 19-7 record, with a 5-1 Pac-10 mark. After the reinstatement announcement, Cal went 12-13 – losing five of its last seven conference series. The Bears entered the tournament 31-20 and 6th place at 13-13 in the conference.

Cal lost its tournament opener last Friday in Houston to #2 Baylor, 6–4, and the Bears found themselves in danger of going 0-2 for their third straight NCAA Tournament appearance.

The Bears avoided elimination with a 10-6 victory over #4 Alcorn State. Cal – which had trailed 4-0 after two innings vs. Alcorn State – continued to make its way through the losers bracket with a 6-3 win over #8 national seed Rice and an 8-0 victory over Baylor to force a deciding game on Monday (in a “Battle of the Bears”).

In Monday’s decisive game vs. Baylor, the Golden Bears trailed 7-1 going into the bottom of the 6th. Cal fought back and trailed 8-5 going into the bottom of the 9th. The Golden Bears trailed 8-7 with the bases loaded and two-outs/two strikes when sophomore first baseman Devon Rodriguez singled to right field to bring home the winning runs and a 9-8 victory.

It was fitting that a team that dramatically escaped the budget axe dramatically escaped elimination with four straight wins to advance to the Super Regionals and put themselves two wins from their first appearance in Omaha since 1992.

It has become clear that it’s very difficult to eliminate Cal baseball, both on and off the field.

Dallas Baptist players dog pile after their regional win over Oral Roberts

Dallas Baptist is the quintessential underdog team. The Patriots compete as an independent in baseball and did not begin playing college baseball on the Division I level until 2006 (DBU previously was an NAIA program). Baseball is the only Dallas Baptist sport that plays at the DI level.

Being an independent, the Patriots are forced to load up their schedule with tough teams in the hopes of grabbing some wins that look good on an NCAA Tournament resume.

This year, the Patriots were one of the last at-large teams into the field after finishing the regular season 39-17. Dallas Baptist scored wins at Texas A&M, Rice and Oklahoma and posted two wins vover TCU, including one in Ft. Worth, along with a series victory over Atlantic-10 champion Charlotte to end the regular season.

Their 2011 tournament appearance is the second in the program’s history. The Patriots also were selected to the NCAAs in 2008, going 0-2 in the College Station Regional.

The Patriots received the #3 seed in the Ft. Worth regional, which included two teams from the 2010 CWS (Oklahoma,and TCU), as well as perennial tournament participant Oral Roberts.

Dallas Baptist edged out Oklahoma 3-2 in 10 innings in their tournament opener Friday, followed by a 3-2 victory over host TCU. DBU was forced to play on Monday after Oral Roberts won 7-2 on Sunday night.

In Monday’s deciding game, the Patriots jumped out to an 8-0 lead after their first at-bat and led 11-4 after only three innings. ORU cut the deficit to 11-9 going into the 8th inning, but the DBU bullpen kept the Golden Eagles off the board the rest of the way and the Patriots won the game to advance to the Super Regionals for the first time in school history.

DBU head coach Dan Heefner has been able to achieve his program’s success despite not being able to compete in recruiting with other Texas baseball powers such as Texas, Texas A&M, TCU and Rice.

This Super Regional matchup was so unlikely that the NCAA did not announce where it was going to held until Tuesday morning. Neither school’s home field was adequate enough to host tournament games.

Dallas Baptist put in a bid to host at a nearby stadium for an Independent League team, but Cal was given the nod as host and games will be played at Santa Clara University’s Stephen Schott Stadium, located nearly 50 miles from Cal’s Berkeley campus.

Dallas Baptist features one of the top offenses in the country with a .311 team batting average, ranking 16th in the country, to go along with a .483 slugging percentage that ranks sixth in the nation. Five players are batting over .300, led by senior OF Jason Krizan who is hitting .419 with 81 RBIs and a .719 slugging percentage.

On the mound, DBU’s team ERA is 4.68. Two of the Patriots top pitchers are the team’s #1 and #2 starters. Senior Brandon Williamson is 10-3 with a 3.98 ERA and senior Jared Stafford is 8-4 with a 3.03 ERA. The two have the second- and third-lowest ERAs on the team. Other than Stafford and Williamson, all but one DBU pitcher features an ERA over 4.5.

To match the Patriots strong hitting attack, Cal features a pitching staff with a team ERA of 2.88, ranked 14th in the nation. Only one Cal pitcher has an ERA over 5.00.

The Bears feature four pitchers with at least nine starts: senior Kevin Miller (6-4, 2.62 ERA), junior Erik Johnson (6-4 2.91), sophomore Justin Jones (8-6 3.09) and junior Dixon Anderson (4-3 3.90). The bullpen was one of the stars of the Houston Regional. In their five games last weekend, Cal’s ‘pen combined to allow only two earned runs in 25.2 IP.

Cal boasts a team batting average of .286, led by Pac-10 player of the year sophomore 2B Tony Renda (.335, team leading 41 RBIs). Only four of Cal’s regular starters having batting averages over .300: senior Austin Booker (.313), junior Chadd Krist (.306) and Vince Bruno (.301). Sophomore 1B Devon Rodriguez, who was MVP of the Houston Regional, is hitting .292.

Both Dallas Baptist and Cal are strong-fielding teams, with each club’s fielding percentage at .974 (good for top-40 in the nation).

One of these teams will become the fifth team since 2007 to be seeded #3 or #4 in its Regional and end up advancing to the CWS (UC Irvine and Mississippi State are #3 seeds that also are playing this weekend in Super Regionals).

Of the previous four teams to make it to Omaha as a #3 or #4 seed, two have gone on to win the national championship (#3 Oregon State in 2007 and #4 Fresno St in ’08).

Cal and Dallas Baptist’s stories are different, but both are unlikely tales, and their respective stories illustrate why the winner of the series will be the first Cinderella at the new TD Ameritrade Park.

Yet only one story will be told in Omaha.

Dallas Baptist Standout On Verge Of “The Goal”…

In a season where the new BBCOR bat standards have seen offensive numbers drop across college baseball, Jason Krizan has defied the odds. The Dallas Baptist outfielder is batting a robust .419 with 10 home runs and 81 RBIs, while leading the nation with 39 doubles.

Krizan’s team has defied the odds as well this year. In just the independent school’s sixth season as a Division One program Dallas Baptist finds itself in a Super Regional this weekend taking on California for the right to advance to the College World Series.

In this exclusive interview with Collegebaseball360.com editor Sean Stires, Krizan discusses how his team was able to beat both TCU and Oklahoma (both 2010 CWS teams) to win the Ft. Worth Regional. He also covers his success with the new bats as well as getting drafted this week by the Detroit Tigers and more!

Krizan

Jason Krizan – 6’0 – OF – Pflugerville, TX

Head Coach – Dan Heefner