DePauw baseball took its talents to Arizona over the break to compete in the Tucson Invitational.
The Tigers (9-7) went 4-3 over the course of the tournament and faced an array of teams that included Lewis and Clark, Hamline and Carleton College.
“We saw some really good things in Tucson,” said junior infielder Reid Pittard. “Our bats really came alive and we pitched well and played good defense for the most part. Unfortunately, we just gave a couple games away due to some bad innings.”
A string of those bad innings came in the tournament opener against Carleton,where the Tigers squad lost 3-5 to a program that had gone 0-8 to begin the season.
“Baseball’s a game where on any given day, anyone can win,” said senior pitcher Wyatt Spector. “It was just being able to stay in the moment and flush everything, and then move onto the next game.”
DePauw did just that, as the team bounced back in game two to blow out the Knights by a score of 10-3.
While the tournament presented a heavy workload for the Tiger pitching staff, it also allowed rookies to see some time on the field. The group included first-year pitchers Grant Rademacher and Aaron Miller, both of whom were able to log in innings on the mound during the tournament.
“I think it’s good that we have a long stretch of games,” Spector said. “[We] have guys that get an opportunity [to] show what they got, and win a spot.”
Spector was recently named NCAC Baseball Pitcher of the Week after tossing his first complete game shutout in the Tigers’ 6-0 win over Gustavus Adolphus in the seventh and final game of the Tucson Invitational.
“We started out flat and weren’t playing our best baseball,” said junior outfielder and pitcher Mike Hammel, "[but] it was a fun trip, and it was nice to see us bounce back and finish strong.”
DePauw now heads into conference play, where the team will face Wittenberg, Denison and Ohio Wesleyan during the first three weeks of April.
After an early exit in the NCAC tournament last season, the Tigers will look to defeat their conference rivals down the homestretch to finish the regular season on a high note.
“Conference play is always competitive and we love competing with a conference championship on the line,” Hammel said.
The Tigers will play back-to-back doubleheaders against Wittenberg University on Saturday, with the first pitch of game one coming from Walker Field at 1 p.m.