HOUSTON – The No. 6 seed HCU baseball team secured the 2025 Southland Conference Championship on Friday evening at Husky Field with a 16-11 win over No. 8 seed New Orleans in a game the Huskies led from start to finish, marking a perfect 5-0 run through SLC Bracket Play and the SLC Championship Series to earn a berth to the NCAA Tournament.
The Huskies (32-23) took advantage of 14 hits, 13 walks, a pair of hit batters and three UNO (28-26) errors.
HCU was the visiting team in game two and the Huskies set the offensive tone early.
Kenneth Dutka and
Tevis Payne opened the game with back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners with nobody out.
Jack Walker then lined one out to left field for a sacrifice fly, scoring Dutka and staking the Huskies to an early 1-0 lead.
The second inning started with
Katcher Halligan's fifth double of the tournament and he then moved over to third on an error on a sacrifice bunt that allowed
Matthew Leiterman to reach first.
Jeremy Rader singled to center, scoring Halligan and putting the Huskies up by two.
Trevor Roper followed with a bunt single to load the bases with nobody out. Privateers' starter Grant Edwards retired the next two hitters before walking
Jack Walker and scoring another run. Hayden O'Dell then walked the first batter he faced,
Rhett Hendricks, to push across another HCU run.
Parker Edwards followed with a single through the left side to bring home to more, giving the Huskies a 6-0 lead in the middle of the second.
The Privateers got on the board in the third, scoring four with three of those runs coming on a home run from Tristan Moore. The Huskies answered immediately in the top of the fourth. Dutka drove a double to left center to lead things off with
Luke Bard drawing a walk right after.
Jack Walker dropped down a sacrifice bunt to move both runners into scoring position. Hendricks came up with a two-run double to right center followed by another Edwards single through the left side to bring home Hendricks and give HCU a 9-4 cushion.
In the bottom of the fourth, UNO put up a crooked number of its own with a pair of unearned runs scoring with two outs. Leading 9-6, the Huskies kept things going at the plate in the fifth. HCU drew consecutive walks to start the inning and Dutka dropped down a bunt single with a throwing error by the UNO pitcher allowing Rader to race around and score from second to put HCU back ahead by four, 10-6.
Bryan Loriga drove the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the fifth over the left field wall, chasing Caravalho from the game. The HCU starter allowed seven runs, though just four were earned, in four innings pitched with seven hits allowed, four strikeouts and two walks.
The sixth and seventh innings both passed without runs from either team, sending the game into the eighth with the Huskies leading, 10-7.
The top of the eighth started with back-to-back walks and, with one out, Halligan singled to right to load the bases.
Matthew Leiterman lofted a single to shallow left center to bring two runs home and give HCU runners on first and second. Two wild pitches allowed the runners to take a base on each with the second allowing Halligan to score. The next batter, Rader, hit a ground ball to second with a throw coming home but Laxton was able to avoid the tag give the Huskies their fourth run of the inning and a 14-7 lead.
UNO didn't go away, however, as the Privateers managed to load the bases with two outs. The Privateers' hottest hitter of the weekend, Moore, came up and delivered a grand slam off the top of the wall to make it just a three-run game in the Huskies' favor.
The Huskies managed to push two more insurance runs across in the top of the ninth before
Ben Norton slammed the door shut in the ninth and secure the championship.
Reliever
Louis Castano earned the win in relief, moving to 7-1 on the year with 3.2 innings pitched. Norton then threw 1.1 innings of shutout ball to pick up save number nine of the season.
Hendricks drove in three and scored twice while going 2-for-4 at the plate while Edwards also had three RBI, going 3-for-6. Walker led the Huskies with three runs scored while going 0-for-1 at the plate and also had two RBI.
HCU's NCAA Tournament berth comes 10 years, to the day, after the program's only other Southland Conference championship since joining ahead of the 2013-14 school year.
In head coach
Clay VanderLaan's first season at the helm, the Huskies' 32 wins this season give the program a 14-game improvement in the win column from the 2024 season.
The Huskies will find out their destination for the NCAA Tournament regional on Monday, May 26, with the Selection Show currently scheduled for 11:00 a.m.
