CSAC CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL

IMMACULATA, Pa.- The Immaculata University baseball team hopes to carry over their record setting 2017 season into the Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) postseason this week as they enter as the No. 2 seed for the second consecutive season and will host No. 3 Neumann on Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m. in the opening round of the four-team, double-elimination tournament.
 
No. 1 Keystone will host No. 4 Gwynedd Mercy in the other contest, and the tournament will move to PNC Field in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Friday and Saturday to determine a CSAC champion.
 
The losers from this afternoon's games will play at 11 a.m. on Friday morning and the winners will play on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.  The lone remaining undefeated team after those two games will advance to Saturday's CSAC Championship game while the other two teams will play in an elimination game at 7 p.m. on Friday night.  The winner of that game will need to beat the undefeated team twice on Saturday to earn the CSAC's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
 
The Mighty Macs defeated Neumann in two of three games in their series this season.  IU saw a pair of two-run leads disappear against the Knights in the opener and fell 5-4 in extra innings on April 23^rd, however they bounced back by scoring five runs in each of the first three innings in the second game and cruised to a 15-3 win.  The next day, the Mighty Macs locked up the series at home with a 9-6 win over the Knights.  Junior pitchers Ryan Blough and Eddie Decker each picked up the win as they threw well in games two and three, respectively.
 
These two teams met last year in the playoffs on two occasions.  Today's game marks a rematch of last year's opener when the Macs fell 4-3 to the Knights, also as the No. 2 seed.  However, the Macs exacted some revenge in an elimination game as they knocked the Knights out of the playoffs with a 19-7 victory before falling in their first-ever appearance in the CSAC Championship game, 17-7, to No. 1 Keystone.
 
This is the Mighty Macs' fifth appearance in the CSAC Championships, and they have won at least one game in each of their previous four trips with last year's run to the CSAC title game being their most successful appearance.
 
The Mighty Macs will face either the Griffins or Giants in the next round, depending on their result.  IU went 2-1 against Gwynedd Mercy this season.  They defeated them 10-3 in a single game as they erupted for six runs in the third inning to pull away in that victory on April 28^th.  In the doubleheader on April 30^th, the Macs couldn't get anything going offensively and lost 5-0 in the opener, but they scored eight unanswered runs in the second game to erase a 4-0 deficit and take the series with an 8-5 win.
 
The Mighty Macs only series loss this season came at the hands of Keystone this past weekend.  The Macs lost the first two games, 6-2, but they ensured one victory with a 9-5 win over the Giants in the finale.
 
You can follow today's game with Live Stats or Live Video.
 
You can follow Live Stats for this weekend's games as well.