NCAA Tournament Brackets
 
INDIANAPOLIS – The Slippery Rock University baseball team earned an at-large berth into the 2022 NCAA Division II Tournament, the NCAA selection committee announced during a live selection show of the tournament field Sunday night.
 
SRU will enter the NCAA Tournament as the fourth seed out of the Atlantic Region and play fifth-seeded Seton Hill University 11 a.m. Thursday in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Slippery Rock returns to the national tournament for the first time since 2007.
 
The NCAA Tournament is comprised of 56 teams, 22 automatic berths and 34 at-large selections, spanning eight regions. The championship preliminary round competition provides for 16 regional sites that consist of either three-team or four-team, double-elimination tournaments that will be conducted May 19-22.
 
The winners of those regional-round competitions advance to a super-regional round May 27-28 that consist of two teams competing in a best-of-three series. The eight super-regional champions will advance Division II College World Series June 4-11 in Cary, North Carolina.
 
Overall, seven teams from the Atlantic Region qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Millersville and Charleston garnered automatic bids after winning the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Mountain East Conference tournaments, respectively, while West Chester, Gannon, Slippery Rock, Seton Hill and East Stroudsburg each received at-large berths.
 
West Chester and Millersville were awarded the top seeds in the region and will both serve as regional host sites. Gannon enters the NCAA Tournament as the third seed followed by The Rock, Seton Hill, East Stroudsburg and Charleston.
 
Slippery Rock, West Chester and Seton Hill are scheduled to compete in one regional pod. The loser of Thursday's game between The Rock and Griffins will face the top-seeded Golden Rams later in the day while the winner of the game moves on to a contest Friday where it will face either West Chester for the first time or have a re-match of Thursday's contest in an elimination game.
 
The Thursday games in the other Atlantic Region pod feature Gannon vs. East Stroudsburg and Millersville vs. Charleston for what will be a clash between the two conference tournament champions in the region. 
 
Slippery Rock earned its spot in this year's NCAA Tournament after a season in which it has gone 33-16 overall. The 33 victories represent the highest win total at SRU since the 2009 team won 36 games.
 
The Rock swept Seton Hill in a four-game series earlier in the year for what marked the first time the Griffins were swept in a conference series since joining the PSAC in 2014.
 
SRU also faced four other tournament-bound teams as it split a four-game series with Gannon, went 1-2 in midweek games against G-MAC champion Walsh of the Midwest Region and lost a pair of close games to East Stroudsburg and Millersville in the PSAC Tournament.
 
Slippery Rock is led by PSAC West Coach of the Year Jeff Messer, who has now guided the program to 13 of its 14 NCAA Tournament appearances all-time. The Rock's 14 total NCAA Tournament appearances rank third among all PSAC teams behind only Shippensburg (22) and West Chester (15).
 
SRU's roster is a veteran group that battled its way to the NCAA Tournament during the season by combining a high-powered offense with one of the best starting rotations in the region.
 
The Rock placed six athletes on the All-PSAC West Team including first team honorees pitcher Devin Dunn, catcher Connor Hamilton, designated hitter Eddie Morris and outfielder Alex Robenolt as well as second team selections pitcher Ricky Mineo and utility-pitcher Luke Trueman. Additionally, pitcher Ethan Edkins was named the PSAC West Freshman of the Year.
 
Ticket information, live coverage options and a complete tournament preview will be provided early in the week on RockAthletics.com and all of its official social media outlets.
 





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