MOUNT BERRY, Ga. - After closing out a dramatic victory last weekend at Hendrix to extend its season, Berry's baseball team will travel to Birmingham, Ala., and the championship bracket of the 2023 Southern Athletic Association Championship. The Vikings will open up the bracket by taking on Centre at 1 p.m. EDT.
The Vikings (20-21) enter as the No. 5 seed in Birmingham, with host BSC the top seed, Centre at No. 2, and Millsaps at No. 6. Millsaps swept two games from No. 3 Rhodes to advance to the final weekend of play, while BSC took two games from Oglethorpe, and Centre rallied to take the final two games of the series from No. 7 Sewanee.
The Vikings earned a 2-1 win over Hendrix to win their three-game set over the Warriors.
Wesley Wade hit a first inning solo homer, then
Levi Cloud launched a solo blast in the eighth to account for all of the runs in the game for the Vikings.
Jackson Halla worked 7.1 innings on the mound to get the win, with Tyer Cassidy nailing down the save with five outs from the pen.
Berry will hope to carry its momentum that it built in April over to May. Beginning with a 7-4 win over No. 9-ranked LaGrange on the road Apr. 4, the Vikings went 10-4 over their final 14 games of the month. Included in that stretch is a series win at Centre, a series win at home over Millsaps, and two series wins over Hendrix.
Berry is 5-4 against the teams that will be in Birmingham over the next three days for the championship round. After dropping the first game of the series agianst Millsaps 6-5, Berry came back to win the next two games by a combined score of 28-6. In the last weekend of the regular season, Berry bested Centre in a three-game set, taking the opener 8-4 and the rubber game 6-2. Centre would win the middle game of the series in walk-off fashion, 4-3.
Against BSC, the Vikings dropped the first two games of the series before coming through with an 8-4 victory over the Panthers in the finale. Halla went six innings to get the win, with Cassidy notching a three-inning save. After sweeping Centre to all but lock down the SAA regular season championship, the Panthers went on a four-game losing streak, falling to LaGrange 15-3 and then getting swept at Hendrix. Since then, the Panthers (33-9) have tried to right the ship with a two-game sweep of Oglethorpe in the SAA opening round and a win over UAB in exhibition play.
Centre (28-15) at one point was 22-9 on the season after a win over Hanover Apr. 11. Since then, the Colonels have gone 6-6, getting swept by BSC and dropping two of three to Berry. The Colonels dropped the first game of the series to Sewanee in the SAA opening round, but wins by scores of 13-3 and 7-4 sent the Colonels to Birmingham.
Millsaps (21-21) dropped six games in a row in mid-April, beginning with the two losses to Berry and continuing through to a three-game sweep at the hands of Rhodes. The Majors would get right against Oglethorpe, sweeping that series before heading to Memphis, Tenn., and a rematch with the Lynx. The Majors never trailed in the series, earning matching 9-3 wins to move through to the final weekend of play.
The double-elimination bracket begins at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday with Centre, as the home team, taking on the Vikings. BSC will then be the host against Millsaps at 5:15 p.m. EDT. The winners of the two games will play at Noon Friday, with the loser's bracket starting at 3:15 p.m.
