Let The Games Begin

It's not October but there is postseason baseball in the air.

And for the Scorpions all they have to do is step outside and smell the fresh cut grass.

The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College hosts the six-team Red River Atlantic Conference Tournament that begins today at Scorpion Field.

UTB-TSC (22-30) earned the sixth seed with a 7-5 conference record and has drawn the No. 1 seed Texas Wesleyan University, who is ranked No. 19 according to the latest NAIA Top 25 Coach's Poll at 6:00 p.m. in the opening round of the double elimination tournament.

"I feel good about the team," Barta said. "To say I'm not worried would be a lie. I think if every coach did not have paranoia then I think you're under preparing. "

The Scorpions' game will be the primetime game with the first going in the morning with No. 3 seed Huston-Tillotson vs. No. 4 Northwood at 10 a.m. and No. 2 Bacone vs. No. 5 Wiley 2 p.m.

Head coach Joel Barta's Scorpions went 7-2 in its last stretch of games before today's tournament that included UTB-TSC taking two-of-three from Houston Baptist University for the school's first win over a Division I opponent in any sport.

TWU (37-12) ended their regular season batting at a .362 clip with 42 homers on the year. The Rams have also outscored their opponents this year 436-239 and boast a solid 4.81 team ERA. With those daunting numbers the Scorpion skipper isn't getting too ahead of himself and knows his team will have to go out there and earn it.

"We have every intention of taking that next step," Barta said. "To say it is one thing and we talked so much about it. Just shut up and play, put your money where your mouth is and we've done that. Early on we said we were going to this and expecting people to give us things (early in the year). The kind of baseball we play and the reason we structured our schedule is all for the end of the year, for these types of games and now it gets fun."

Huston-Tillotson University (26-20) start the tournament against Northwood at (22-23) with HTU riding a five-game losing streak into today's match up. The Rams swept the Scorpions this season and if the Rams lose and Scorpions win they will face each other in the next round.

Game 2 of the tourney is Bacone University against Wiley College who swept the Rams in their final regular season series to move ahead of the Scorpions into the fifth seed avoiding nationally ranked Texas Wesleyan.

The Achilles heel for the Scorpions has been its fielding errors which has put a lot more pressure on the Scorpions than they should have had this season. Despite cleaning up towards the latter part of the season coach Barta said that not giving their opponent's extra outs will be the deciding factor.

"We feel good about the match ups and our chances," Barta said. "The biggest thing is we can't walk out there and expect to win. We've got to locate on the mound. There is a reason these teams are still playing and they can hurt you in a hurry. We can't allow extra base runners and as long we can keep it to 27 outs instead of 31 or 35 I think it gives us a better chance to win."

 UTB-TSC will also audio and video webcast all games through Dakstats. Links will be posted today