The Denison baseball team (38-5) will host an NCAA D3 best-of-three super-regional series against the Belhaven Blazers (34-13) beginning Friday. The Blazers will make the trip to Granville from Jackson, Mississippi. A member of the Collegiate Conference of the South, this is the first NCAA tournament berth for Belhaven.

Denison earned their spot in the super-regional series with a regional championship win over the Keystone College Giants (37-11) Sunday at Granville’s Big Red Field. Keystone scored first in Sunday’s contest, but the Big Red scored the next eight runs and ended up with a 13-2 victory.

Sophomore catcher Jack Lutte leads Denison with a batting average of .429. Junior Erik Sundgren paces the Big Red with 14 home runs and 71 runs batted in. Sundgren hit his 14th long ball Sunday against Keystone. 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 29-1. They are sophomore Sam Larson (5-0, 1.74), sophomore Peter Lemke (8-0, 2.00), senior Nick Falter, an Olentangy Liberty alum (11-0, 2.45), and junior Will Rettig (5-1, 2.65). 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 .710 winning percentage (375-153), which is tops in the school’s 126-year baseball history. In 2019, Deegan became the program’s career leader in wins.

This weekend’s series is the second straight appearance in the super-regionals for the Big Red. Last season, they fell at home with two straight losses to Birmingham-Southern College and finished with a record of 42-8. The first pitch in Granville Friday is slated for 2:00 p.m.