What a year for the Denison Big Red baseball team. They won a school-record 51 times, tied an NCAA Division III record with a streak of 45 straight victories during the season, and finished up the schedule with their first national title.

The Big Red went to Eastlake, Ohio for the second year in a row to play in the DIII World Series. In 2025, their first trip to the national championship, they fell twice in their bracket and were eliminated. Early on this time around, it looked as though they might meet a similar fate. Despite being the #1-ranked team all season, they lost to East Texas Baptist Lions in their first game.

That’s when things changed for the Big Red. They blanked Johns Hopkins 8-0 and topped Baldwin Wallace 6-4 to earn a rematch with ETBU, but they would have to beat them twice to move on to the finals where they would meet the winner of the other bracket in a best-of-three series. And the Big Red did just that, beating the Lions two times last Monday, 13-2 and 11-7.

Those wins set up a finals matchup with the Endicott College Gulls. Denison won the first game 6-0 on Wednesday with outstanding pitching performances from starter Cooper Marrs and reliever Ryan Paganelis, who allowed only four hits combined.

On Thursday, the Big Red needed just one win to capture the title, while Endicott would have to win twice. In the first contest, Endicott overcame an early deficit and won 11-10 with a run in the bottom of the tenth inning. That set the scene for one more, and deciding, game later that day.

In that contest, the Gulls had a 3-0 lead going to the bottom of the fifth inning. Denison was able to plate a run in the fifth and two more in the sixth to tie the score. That lasted until the bottom of the tenth when the Big Red’s All-American, Jack Lutte, singled off the right-field fence to drive in Kelly Crittenberger from second base for the win.

Lutte ended the season leading Denison in all three triple-crown categories with a batting average of .436, 13 home runs, and 70 RBIs, but nothing would be as big for the junior as the one base knock that he had in the final game.

The win in the championship game went to freshman reliever Devin Parker, an Olentangy Orange alum, who went the final 7.1 innings without allowing a run and ceding only two hits and two walks while striking out eight.