Thursday, May 23
Avon, Ohio
2 p.m.
Central Michigan University
vs
No.6 Ohio
CMU's Jordan Bischel, who on Tuesday was named the MAC Coach of the Year, will take his Chippewas to Avon, Ohio for the league tournament beginning on Thursday.
Photo by: Allissa Rusco
MAC Tourney Next For Regular-Season Champions
5/22/2019 2:18:00 PM | Baseball
CMU baseball eyes league championship double
AVON, Ohio – One goal down. On to the next one.
The Central Michigan baseball team wrapped up the Mid-American Conference regular-season championship with a three-game sweep at home of Miami (Ohio) last weekend.
That earned the Chippewas the No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament at Sprenger Stadium in Avon, Ohio. CMU will open the six-team tournament on Thursday (2 p.m.). The tournament champion advances to the NCAA Tournament. CMU is seeking its first NCAA berth since 1995.
There remains a buzz around the Chippewa program after first-year coach Jordan Bischel – who earlier this week was named the Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year – led it to its first regular-season league crown since 2015.
And while Bischel and his troops certainly want to ride the wave of momentum into Avon, they can't get too caught up in the hype, either.
"There is some confidence there and there are some positives in feeling a little bit invincible -- that is a good thing," Bischel said. "But what we have to understand that just because you feel confident does not mean somebody can't beat you. I think (the players) are in a good spot with that."
The Chippewas are 43-12, matching the 1986 team for the third-highest win total in program history. CMU finished 22-5 in MAC play, the most since the '98 team won 23 league games. CMU has won 15 consecutive games and has moved to 18th in the College Baseball Newspaper Top 30 poll.
The poll is merely an opinion and the win streak means little at this point, Bischel said.
"I can imagine that the other five teams in the tournament could not care less how many in a row we have won because those do not count for anything in the tournament, besides being the home team in the bracket," he said.
The Chippewas will play one of three teams – Ohio, Miami (Ohio) or Northern Illinois – in their opener. As the top seed and having earned a bye, CMU will wait on Wednesday's first two tournament results before discovering which of the three aforementioned teams it will face.
That makes preparation different from a normal weekend league series, which the opponent and its starting pitchers, are a known.
"We really talk about what we have to do to be successful, not really so much (what) the other team does, so it should not impact the guys all that much," Bischel said, adding that the series last weekend against Miami gave the Chippewas a good taste of tournament atmosphere. "They knew they had to win to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish, and so I think they will have some of those same butterflies and things this coming weekend."
Several factors, all of them interlinked to a certain degree, have contributed to the program's surge to the top of the league. The starting pitching, led by the one-two punch of Pat Leatherman and Cam Brown, has been nothing short of phenomenal as the pair are a combined 18-1 with a 2.66 earned run average.
At the plate, sophomore Zavier Warren has put together a remarkable breakout year and is among the MAC leaders in nearly every statistical category, while the likes of Zach Gilles, Jacob Crum and Griffin Lockwood-Powell are in the midst of career-best seasons.
A good part of that offensive success can be traced to a hitting philosophy that Bischel and his staff have installed: Patience with a level of aggressiveness that makes a pitcher work. The benefits generally emerge midway through a typical game when the Chippewas are in their third trip through the lineup.
The pitches stack up along with the bases on balls: CMU leads the nation with 357 walks and it ranks third in the country in on-base percentage. Chippewa hitters have drawn 178 more walks than CMU pitching has issued this season.
In football terms, the Chippewas grind down their opponent with a punishing run game and, as Bischel says, "win the time of possession."
"Our pitchers are going to attack you and get the ball in play, they are going to throw strikes," he said. "And on the other end we are going to force you to execute one pitch after another and we are going to make a lot of outs, obviously 27 at some point, but we are going to make those outs hard to get."
The Central Michigan baseball team wrapped up the Mid-American Conference regular-season championship with a three-game sweep at home of Miami (Ohio) last weekend.
That earned the Chippewas the No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament at Sprenger Stadium in Avon, Ohio. CMU will open the six-team tournament on Thursday (2 p.m.). The tournament champion advances to the NCAA Tournament. CMU is seeking its first NCAA berth since 1995.
There remains a buzz around the Chippewa program after first-year coach Jordan Bischel – who earlier this week was named the Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year – led it to its first regular-season league crown since 2015.
And while Bischel and his troops certainly want to ride the wave of momentum into Avon, they can't get too caught up in the hype, either.
"There is some confidence there and there are some positives in feeling a little bit invincible -- that is a good thing," Bischel said. "But what we have to understand that just because you feel confident does not mean somebody can't beat you. I think (the players) are in a good spot with that."
The Chippewas are 43-12, matching the 1986 team for the third-highest win total in program history. CMU finished 22-5 in MAC play, the most since the '98 team won 23 league games. CMU has won 15 consecutive games and has moved to 18th in the College Baseball Newspaper Top 30 poll.
The poll is merely an opinion and the win streak means little at this point, Bischel said.
"I can imagine that the other five teams in the tournament could not care less how many in a row we have won because those do not count for anything in the tournament, besides being the home team in the bracket," he said.
The Chippewas will play one of three teams – Ohio, Miami (Ohio) or Northern Illinois – in their opener. As the top seed and having earned a bye, CMU will wait on Wednesday's first two tournament results before discovering which of the three aforementioned teams it will face.
That makes preparation different from a normal weekend league series, which the opponent and its starting pitchers, are a known.
"We really talk about what we have to do to be successful, not really so much (what) the other team does, so it should not impact the guys all that much," Bischel said, adding that the series last weekend against Miami gave the Chippewas a good taste of tournament atmosphere. "They knew they had to win to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish, and so I think they will have some of those same butterflies and things this coming weekend."
Several factors, all of them interlinked to a certain degree, have contributed to the program's surge to the top of the league. The starting pitching, led by the one-two punch of Pat Leatherman and Cam Brown, has been nothing short of phenomenal as the pair are a combined 18-1 with a 2.66 earned run average.
At the plate, sophomore Zavier Warren has put together a remarkable breakout year and is among the MAC leaders in nearly every statistical category, while the likes of Zach Gilles, Jacob Crum and Griffin Lockwood-Powell are in the midst of career-best seasons.
A good part of that offensive success can be traced to a hitting philosophy that Bischel and his staff have installed: Patience with a level of aggressiveness that makes a pitcher work. The benefits generally emerge midway through a typical game when the Chippewas are in their third trip through the lineup.
The pitches stack up along with the bases on balls: CMU leads the nation with 357 walks and it ranks third in the country in on-base percentage. Chippewa hitters have drawn 178 more walks than CMU pitching has issued this season.
In football terms, the Chippewas grind down their opponent with a punishing run game and, as Bischel says, "win the time of possession."
"Our pitchers are going to attack you and get the ball in play, they are going to throw strikes," he said. "And on the other end we are going to force you to execute one pitch after another and we are going to make a lot of outs, obviously 27 at some point, but we are going to make those outs hard to get."
Players Mentioned
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