Contact: Drew Sauer, Assistant Sports Information Director, 630-637-5324

D3baseball.com Top-25 Poll Week 13

May 18, 2021 – Remaining in the top 10 in the D3baseball.com Top-25 Poll, the North Central College baseball team sits ninth in the 13^th week of the poll after closing out the regular season last week.

North Central finished the regular season with an overall record of 33-7, the third-highest win total in program history while the Cardinals have eclipsed 30 wins four times in the last five full seasons under head coach Ed Mathey.

The top two teams in the poll are unchanged from last week, as Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri) remains atop the poll and Washington and Jefferson College (Pennsylvania) ranks second.  Webster University (Missouri) is up a spot to No. 3, followed by Marietta College (Ohio) and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater falls from third to fifth this week.

As a team, the Cardinals rank in the top 10 nationally in multiple categories, including second in triples (26) and sixth in hit by pitch (79), while the pitching staff ranks fifth in walks allowed per nine innings and ninth in strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.44).

Winners of its sixth-straight College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) regular season championship, the Cardinals became the first team in conference history to achieve the feat, while Mathey ties Augie Schmidt IV for the most conference titles among active head coaches with nine (1994, 1996, 1998, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021).

North Central will co-host the 2021 CCIW Tournament with Wheaton College, as the top-seeded Cardinals are three-time defending tournament champions and will open play on Wednesday, May 19 against the eighth-seeded Thunder with first pitch at 11 a.m. at Pfund Stadium in Carol Stream, Illinois.  The link to the full tournament schedule is available HERE.