EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. - For the second time in less than 48 hours, Webster University will face Spalding University in the championship round of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Baseball Tournament here Sunday, May 12 at 11 a.m. at Roy E. Lee Field on the campus of the University of Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
Sunday's championship, which was originally scheduled to be played at Robert E. Smith Field in Greenville, Ill., was moved to SIUE due to wet, unplayable field conditions following a Saturday that was filled with rain in the Greenville area.
Webster (31-10 on the season) comes into Sunday's game with Spalding as the lone undefeated team in the double-elimination tournament after picking up an 8-1 win on Friday night over Spalding in a winner's bracket match-up at Greenville. The 18th/23rd-ranked Gorloks opened the tournament with an 11-1 win earlier in the day on Friday against Greenville.
Spalding (31-11) advanced to Sunday's championship round following its 9-0 win on Saturday afternoon at SIUE over Greenville University in an elimination game. In the win over Greenville, Spalding collected 11 hits and took advantage of three Panther errors to score nine runs, including scoring eight of those runs in the first four innings to eliminate Greenville, who were the defending tournament runners-up.
Since Webster is undefeated in the tournament, Spalding will need to defeat the Gorloks twice on Sunday to take home the SLIAC Tournament title, while the Gorloks can clinch its second consecutive league tournament title and 10th all-time title in program history with just one win on Sunday. The tournament's if necessary game will be played 30 minutes after the conclusion of Sunday's first contest. The winner of the SLIAC Tournament earns the league's automatic bid into the NCAA Division III Baseball Tournament.
Sunday's match-up will feature the top two teams from the SLIAC in the regular season as both the Gorloks and Golden Eagles shared the regular season title as they each posted identical 18-4 league records. The Golden Eagles, though, earned the No. 1 seed in the tournament by virtue of sweeping its regular season doubleheader against the Gorloks in Louisville, Ky., on March 20.
Webster and Spalding have met seven times previously in the SLIAC Tournament as the Gorloks have won six of those seven games with Spalding's lone win coming in the first championship game of the 2013 tournament that was played in Highland, Ill. In that game, Spalding earned a 4-3 win over the previously undefeated Gorloks to set up an if necessary game and in that if necessary game, Webster earned a 3-1 win over the Golden Eagles to take home its fourth consecutive SLIAC Tournament title.
