Photo by Courtesy Millsaps College
Millsaps has been on a roll this baseball season. The Majors won the Southern Athletic Association regular season title and earned the number-one seed in the Southern Athletic Association Baseball Tournament.
Winning the regular season title earned the Majors the right to host fourth-seed Hendrix, sixth-seed Oglethorpe, and eighth-seed Sewanee for half the conference tournament in a double elimination format. The Majors would defeat Sewanee 12-0 in their first game before falling 13-8 to Hendrix in their next game.
Facing elimination, Millsaps defeated Oglethorge 13-3 to set up another elimination game against Hendrix. The Majors needed two wins to reach the SAA Baseball Championship Series. Millsaps won both games against Hendrix (2-1 and 8-4) to advance to the SAA Baseball Tournament Championship series against Birmingham Southern.
Millsaps outlasted Birmingham Southern in 13 innings to take the game 1-0 and won the SAA Baseball Tournament title with a 5-3 score to win the best-of-three series two games to none.
The Majors had wait to see if they reached a regional tournament in the Division III, because the SAA tournament champion doesn't receive an automatic bid--the SAA is on a two-year probationary period before an auto-bid is awarded.
The Majors received an at-large bid to the Division III Regional in Memphis, a double-elimination tournament. Millsaps faced off against five other teams in a six-team regional for the right to reach the Division III College World Series.
Millsaps lost their first game of the regional to 11-5 to Salisbury, but then the Majors reeled off three straight wins (8-2 over Methodist, 7-0 over Salisbury and 7-6 over Salisbury) to win the D-III Memphis Regional and advance to the D-III College World Series.
Pitcher and infielder Keith Shumaker earned SAA Player of the Year. He went on to be named to the SAA All-Tournament team, and D3baseball.com named him South Region Player of the Year.
Shumaker has started for the Majors on the mound and at the plate. He has a 6-1 record with a 2.74 ERA in 10 starts and is batting .374. He leads the team with 63 runs scored and is second with 51 runs batted in.
Joining Shumaker in recognition were Wes Perkins, Samuel Doucet and Stephen Gates as well as pitcher Will Edwards. All four were named to the regular season SAA All-Conference team. Perkins, Kevin Wall, William Chenoweth and pitcher West Hammond were named to the SAA All-Tournament team.
Wall, Gates and Perkins were named to the All-Regional team. Millsaps head coach Jim Page was named SAA Coach of the Year and South Region Coach of the Year.
Page is in his 25th year with Millsaps with a 648-349-3 overall record with the Majors. This is first regional title for Page and the Majors and first College World Series in school history.
Millsaps will join seven other teams in the eight-team double-elimination College World Series. The Majors will face the Southern Maine Huskies in game one of the D-III CWS, who won Harwich regional.
Game one is set for 10 a.m. on Friday morning. Video and complete coverage is being provided by Turner Sports through the NCAA Division-III website.
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