FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Clark Teuscher, Sports Information Director, 630-637-5302

Official NCAA Tournament Release

May 17, 2010 - For the first time since 1998, the North Central College baseball team will compete in the NCAA Division III Championships, having secured an at-large bid in this year's 55-team tournament.

The Cardinals (31-9), the 2010 College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin regular-season champions, are the No. 2 seed in the six-team Central Region Championship, which will be contested at Swanson Stadium on the campus of Augustana College (Ill.)

North Central's opening-round opponent will be the fifth-seeded Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Ind.) The Fightin' Engineers (29-12) qualified for the tournament by winning the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament.

Other first-round matchups in the Central are No. 1-seeded Buena Vista University (29-11) against sixth-seeded Illinois Wesleyan University (23-20), which won the CCIW Tournament, and third-seeded Ripon College (24-15) against fourth-seeded Webster University (33-9).

The regional tournament begins on Wednesday and concludes on Saturday. Wednesday's schedule is as follows:

12 p.m. - Buena Vista vs. Illinois Wesleyan
3:30 p.m. - North Central vs. Rose-Hulman
7 p.m. - Ripon vs. Webster

This will be the Cardinals' seventh appearance in the NCAA Baseball Championships. A complete tournament schedule and other information can be found at www.augustana.edu/x19853.xml.