The Denison baseball team beat the Belhaven Blazers (Jackson, Miss.) two games to none this past weekend in the DIII NCAA Super-Regionals to advance to the eight-team Championship Series beginning May 30. The double-elimination tournament will be played in Eastlake, Ohio at the home of the Lake County Captains.

Sophomore catcher Jack Lutte leads Denison with a batting average of .416. Junior Erik Sundgren paces the Big Red with 17 home runs and 79 runs batted in. Sundgren hit his 14th long ball in a regional win against Keystone College. It established a new Denison single-season record previously set by Brian McAuliffe in 2021.

The Big Red’s pitching staff are led by four starting pitchers who have a combined record of 32-1. They are sophomore Sam Larson (6-0, 1.89), sophomore Peter Lemke (9-0, 1.92), senior Nick Falter, an Olentangy Liberty alum (12-0, 2.30), and junior Will Rettig (5-1, 2.61). Rettig also has two saves.

Mike Deegan is the Big Red’s head coach. In 13 seasons at Denison, Deegan has guided his teams to five NCAC regular-season titles and six NCAC Tournament titles,  while posting a .711 winning percentage (377-153), which is tops in the school’s 126-year baseball history. In 2019, Deegan became the program’s career leader in wins.

The Championship Series is divided into two pools. Denison is the #2 seed and will play #7 Rowan University on Friday at 4:45 p.m. The winners of the two pools will face each other in a best-of-three series on the last two days of competition. Johns Hopkins is the #1 seed.