HOUSTON – HCU baseball is one of just two Southland Conference teams still alive following last week's Bracket Play and now the No. 6 seed Huskies will host No. 8 New Orleans in the best-of-three SLC Championship Series at Husky Field this coming Thursday through Saturday.
HCU (30-23) began the 2025 season with a new head coach and 33 newcomers following seven-straight losing seasons. The Huskies were picked to finish 10
th out of 11 SLC teams in the league's preseason poll and now find themselves just two wins away from a berth to the NCAA Tournament.
Head coach
Clay VanderLaan guided the Huskies to a perfect 3-0 performance last weekend in the Edinburg Bracket of the Southland Conference Bracket Play, defeating No. 3 seed Lamar once and twice beating host, and No. 2 seed, UT Rio Grande Valley.
HCU rode a number of hot bats in Bracket Play with senior first baseman
Katcher Halligan going 7-for-11 at the plate with five doubles and a triple while driving in four runs and scoring four runs.
Jeremy Rader, meanwhile, went 5-for-10 with three runs scored and three RBI and picked an opportune moment for his first home run of the season, driving a solo shot in the opener against Lamar that gave HCU a 4-0 lead in the sixth inning of a game the Huskies won 6-3. Rader also hit the go-ahead two-out single in the bottom of the eighth that broke a 2-2 tie against UTRGV and put HCU ahead, 4-2.
Kenneth Dutka heads into the Championship Series on a five-game hitting streak that includes four multi-hit games.
Jack Walker has hit safely in his last six games and owns a team-best .323 batting average.
On the mound,
Louis Castano earned a win and a save in Edinburg after locking down a three-inning save against Lamar and then pitching 3.2 innings of relief in the bracket-clinching win over UTRGV. Castano now has a 6-1 record with three saves and a 3.75 ERA in 50.1 innings pitched. Starting pitchers
Parker Edwards and
Joshua Caravalho each earned wins in Edinburg with Edwards upping his team-leading strikeout total to 67 while he is limiting opponents to just a .240 average against him. Caravalho, meanwhile, earned his ninth win of the season to tie him for the SLC lead in wins by a pitcher this year. Closer
Ben Norton earned save number eight in HCU's 9-6 win over UTRGV last weekend and owns a team-low 2.84 ERA.
New Orleans (28-24), meanwhile, blew through the Hammond Bracket as the league's No. 8 seed, knocking off No. 1 seed Southeastern before defeating No. 4 seed Northwestern State twice.
Senior Bryce Calloway leads all SLC players this season with 18 home runs and 62 RBI while his 61 runs scored are tied for second-most in the league. In two seasons with the Privateers, he has hit 27 home runs with 101 RBI. Calloway also takes the mound for UNO, leading the conference with 11 saves while boasting a 3.70 ERA.
Pitcher Hayden O'Dell turned in a quality start for the Privateers in Hammond, tossing 7.1 innings with just two runs allowed (one earned) in a 3-2 win over Northwestern State to remain in the winner's bracket.
The Huskies and Privateers met in a three-game series at UNO's Maestri Field with UNO winning all three games.
Game one is set for Thursday evening at 6:00 p.m. followed by a Friday game at 6:00 p.m. with Saturday's game scheduled for 6:00 p.m., if necessary.
