PRIME TIME: NSU set for its first taste of an NCAA Tournament

Byron Beers, Tahlequah Daily Press, Okla.
·4 min read

May 19—MAGNOLIA, Ark. — Northeastern State will be in new territory Thursday.

The RiverHawks will participate in their first NCAA Tournament in program history when they take on Henderson State at 2 p.m. in the Central Regional II Tournament at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Arkansas.

"It's special," NSU head coach Jake Hendrick said. "At the watch party [NCAA Tournament Selection Show], I was standing with my wife, our four-year old was running around, you see the whole team and the staff that was there, the administrators...there was a lot of time and a lot of effort put into trying to build something you can be proud of where we could have a moment like that. It was very special for me and very special for our players."

The sixth-seeded RiverHawks (37-16) will hit the reset button and try to recover from rare back-to-back losses in their previous two outings against Washburn and Central Missouri on Saturday, May 14 in the MIAA Tournament. It was the first time they suffered consecutive losses since falling to Northwest Missouri on March 26 and 27.

"You have to have a short memory," Hendrick said. "We didn't play our best that day. We didn't play as clean as we wanted to go against Washburn, but that's baseball. That's alright. I think it was good for us. We got guys in there that got experience. During the whole watch party, it feels like we hit the reset button. We're still playing baseball. There didn't need to be any tear shed about dropping two and getting knocked out. Let's play our best baseball this weekend and go make some noise."

NSU goes in with one of the most potent lineups in the nation. The RiverHawks, led by Central Region Player of the Year Brock Reller, Blake Freeman, Blaze Brothers, Brayden Rodden and Matt Kaiser, are hitting .330 as a team with a nation-leading 117 home runs. They have a team .421 on base-percentage.

Reller is hitting .337 with 27 home runs and 82 RBIs, Freeman leads the team with a .416 batting average and has a .496 on-base percentage, Brothers has 15 homers and 48 RBIs, Rodden is hitting .338 with 10 home runs, and Kaiser has 19 homers and is hitting .323. Eight players are hitting .300 or better, and six players have hit at least 10 home runs.

Fifth-year senior Jonathan Smithey is expected to get the start on the mound. Smithey (7-2) has a 3.18 earned run average and has recorded 65 strikeouts in 76.1 innings. The right-hander was at the top of his game in his last outing against Rogers State in the MIAA Tournament where he allowed just five hits and one earned run across seven innings. He finished with five strikeouts and issued one walk.

"I feel good about having Smithey on the mound," Hendrick said. "He's a senior, he's competitive, he's got good maturity. He's well rested going in. To have him ready in the regional opener, I feel really good."

Henderson State, the No. 3 seed, enters at 38-15 overall. The Reddies have won three of their last four games, the lone loss coming to Southern Arkansas in the championship game of the Great American Conference Tournament.

"On paper, we're more offensive, but that's just going to be the case for most of our opponents," Hendrick said. "They lean heavily on their pitching and defense, and their first guy is [Spencer] Taack, who pitched in a regional last year, so he's got experience on that stage. He's very tough and very competitive. We're going to have to match that right away. If we do that...we lean on our offense, and they lean on their pitching. It's going to be a very interesting matchup. It's going to be about who executes better on that side."

Spencer Taack (8-1) has posted a 3.36 ERA in 14 appearances, all of which have been in starting roles. Taack has 74 strikeouts and 29 walks in 85.2 innings.

Dillon Thomas leads the Reddie lineup with a .406 batting average, to go along with six home runs and 33 RBIs. David Vilches has hit a team-high 17 home runs, and Greyson Stevens is hitting .356 with nine homers and has driven in a team-best 47 runs.

Second-seeded Southern Arkansas (41-11) and No. 7 seed Washburn (33-20) meet in Thursday's finale at 6 p.m. The two winners play Friday at 6 p.m., and the two losers play Friday at 2 p.m.