Mesa Sports Memory: Baseball claims fourth national title in 2014
After Mesa won the 1980 NJCAA Outdoor Track and Field national championship the school went into a drought that did not see another national title for 34 years. That was when the women's basketball team claimed the Division II crown in 2014. The wait for another championship was quite a bit shorter.
In fact, it lasted barely more than two months before the MCC baseball team claimed the fourth national title in that sport.
The T-Birds did it in dramatic fashion, but we'll get to that in a moment.
First, Mesa had to qualify for the national event which it did with relative ease. Playing the entire event at home after receiving the No. 1 seed with a 27-11 conference mark, in the first round of the Region I championships MCC blasted Utah State-Eastern 11-1 and 8-0 with neither game lasting the full nine innings due to the run rule.
That put the T-Birds up against Scottsdale for the right to move on to Enid, Okla, for the NJCAA event.
The first game of that best of three series wasn't very close either as MCC won, 8-2.
In the final, however, the tension built. Leading 3-0 entering the bottom of the eighth, Casey Moses drew a bases-loaded walk plating a run that proved crucial. The Artichokes rallied in the ninth. With two out and two on SCC scored three times. On his second pitch of the game relief pitcher Ryan Chen induced a fly ball to center fielder Cole Loncar and Mesa was on its way to Oklahoma.
After enjoying a relatively easy regional, MCC quickly found itself in the most difficult situation possible at nationals, having to battle its way through the losers' bracket after falling to Vincennes (Ind.), 9-4, in its first game.
That meant the T-Birds would have to win five straight if they were to claim the title. Which, of course, is exactly what they did.
It began with another fairly easy victory, 9-0, over Lincoln Land (Ill.) in seven innings. Mesa broke the contest open with six runs in the sixth to back the one-hit pitching of John Havird.
Next up was the host team, Northeastern Oklahoma-Enid. Tied 5-5 in the top of the eighth, MCC scored five times en route to a 10-7 win. Alex Gudac was 2-4 at the plate with three RBIs and a home run.
Then it was Southeastern (Iowa) and again Mesa resorted to late-inning heroics in an 8-3 win. Tied at three MCC scored twice in the eighth and added three more in the ninth. Jordan Zimmerman had the big day at the plate going 3-5 with four driven in and clubbing two homers.
Next up was Hinds (Miss.) and an easy, 12-0, five-inning victory. MCC pounded out 13 hits with Gudac collecting three including a triple, and Zack Soria and Levi Larmour each drove in three.
With seemingly everything going right, Mesa even won a coin flip to determine which of three teams that all had one loss would advance directly to the finals. After Hinds knocked off Madison (Wisc.) it was a rematch for the championship.
And what a championship game it was, lasting 11 innings before MCC prevailed, 9-7.
The T-Birds broke a 6-6 tie in the top of the 11th with three runs. Tiring ace Tyler Carvalho entered the game to try to lock things down but he struggled, allowing a run and facing a two-out, bases loaded, situation. But like a true ace, Carvalho buckled down and induced a ground ball to shortstop to end the game with MCC winning, 9-7. It was probably fortuitous that Carvalho held the Eagles at that spot as on deck was Marshall Boggs, who had set a tournament record with 16 hits.
The honors then began to flow. The final record, 52-13, represented Mesa's highest victory total ever.
Zimmerman was named tournament MVP with a .438 batting average and 14 RBIs. Relief pitcher Nick Schuman was Pitcher of the Tournament after hurling 9.1 shutout innings and serving up just three hits.
Soria, Gudac and Evan Fresquez were all named to the all-tournament team and coach Tony Cirelli was selected as national Coach of the Year.
It all resulted in Mesa's 19th national championship. The wait for No. 20 was only three more years when the men's golf team recorded that nice, round, number in 2017.
