Mid-American Conference

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – They won't go in wide-eyed and just happy to be there.
 
That isn't the way the Central Michigan baseball team has ever operated under coach Jordan Bischel.
 
The Chippewas are scheduled to open NCAA Regional play on Friday (1 p.m.) against host Notre Dame at Frank Eck Baseball Stadium. The Fighting Irish, who are ranked sixth in the coaches poll, are the No. 10 overall seed in the 64-team tournament and the top seed in the regional.
 
UConn is seeded second, Michigan is No. 3, and the Chippewas are fourth. UConn and U-M are set to meet on Friday (7 p.m.). The double-elimination tournament continues with two games daily through the weekend and a possible final game on Monday.
 
The Chippewas (40-16) are in the NCAA Tournament for the second straight full season. In 2019, they went 1-2 – knocking off Miami (Fla.) in their tourney opener – in the regional in Starkville, Miss. There was no tournament during the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
 
"I think the experience we got from 2019 was to soak it all in, and we understand that we're good enough to be here and we're good enough to play with confidence and do what we do well," said senior first baseman Zach Heeke, one of several Chippewas who played in Starkville.
 
Heeke, along with fellow veterans Zach Gilles, Griffin Lockwood-Powell, Chase Rollin, Jordan Patty and Cameron Brown, form the core of a group that has led a resurgence of Chippewa baseball engineered by Bischel.
 
All Bischel has done since taking over the program before the 2019 season is win three MAC championships (two regular season, one tournament), take the Chippewas to two NCAA Tournaments, compile a remarkable 98-36 record, and lead CMU to back-to-back 40-win seasons for the first time since 1985-88.
 
Though CMU had enjoyed plenty of success as a program both historically and relatively recently, the 2019 NCAA berth was CMU's first since 1995.
 
"When I got here it's not like it was a struggling program," said Bischel, who on Wednesday was named the Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year for the second time. "I thought the biggest thing was that we just had to start talking about doing things the right way, playing hard, being good teammates, caring about each other, and buying into what we were doing.
 
"Everybody just kind of bought into the vision and when that happens, big things can happen and obviously they have."
 
Even bigger things could happen this weekend, but it will take an awful lot of doing. One thing is clear: the Chippewas won't be enamored by an opponent's reputation or the moment.
 
"We treat every game with 90-foot bases and a 60-foot mound and I get it, it's impactful to have some of that (tournament) experience," Bischel said, adding that in 2019, the Chippewas won the league championship and then defeated Miami (Fla.) for the program's first NCAA Tournament victory in more than 30 years.
 
"I'm glad we do have some (tournament experience), but it doesn't guarantee a whole lot," he said.
 
The Field
Notre Dame (30-11) is in the midst of its own resurgence under second-year coach Link Jarrett, who guided the Irish to the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season championship and earned the league coach of the year award.
 
Notre Dame is making its first tournament appearance since 2015. UConn (33-17) is the BIG EAST champion while Michigan (27-17) finished third in the Big Ten, which did not allow its members to play nonconference opponents – the Chippewas and U-M play in most years – and did not hold a league tournament.
 
"Coach Jarrett has done as good a job as any coach in the country the last two years," Bischel said. "Not speaking ill of anything they had going on before that, but we played them a couple of years ago and won pretty handily. He has turned them into a legit Omaha contender.
 
"You don't win the ACC by four or five games with luck. You do it with good play. They just don't give you a thing. They throw strikes, they pitch well, they can hit and run, they can bunt, they can steal bases, they've got a guy that can hit it out of the park at any time, they're deep in the lineup. It's just a really well-coached, really bought-in team."
 
The Chippewas are 8-5 against teams from Power 5 conferences during Bischel's tenure and earlier this season took two of three games at West Virginia, which was ranked 23rd at the time.
 
The Notre Dame Regional champion advances to the Super Regional the following weekend and will take on the winner of the Starkville Regional in a best-of-three series. The Starkville Regional comprises host Mississippi State, Samford, Campbell and VCU.
 
The Chippewas
CMU comes in riding an eight-game win streak. The Chippewas wrapped up their second straight MAC crown last weekend with a 5-4 victory in the third of a four-game series at Toledo.
 
CMU epitomizes a team that manufactures runs. The Chippewas lead the nation in walks, rank second in sacrifice bunts, sixth in on-base percentage, 22nd in hit batters, and 37th in stolen bases.
 
On the mound, CMU ranks sixth nationally in team ERA, first with 10 shutouts, and 10th in WHIP.
 
Bischel pointed out that the Chippewas have hit 15 home runs this season, one fewer than Notre Dame's Niko Kavadas.
 
"I think our confidence level's high," Heeke said. "We do what we do and we don't worry about other teams that much. We're going to play hard, we're going to do the little things right, we're going to have fun in the dugout and we're going to do stuff that not a lot of other teams in the country do.
 
"Every single guy on our team does something to help us win. We have to have confidence in ourselves and that's where it starts."
 
Freshman Phenom
Bischel will start redshirt freshman right-hander Andrew Taylor on Friday. The 6-foot-5, 190-pounder has put together one of the best seasons in CMU history with an 11-3 record, a 1.21 ERA and a 0.86 WHIP.
 
Taylor was named to the Collegiate Baseball All-America Second Team on Thursday. Just a day before, he collected the MAC Pitcher of the Year and MAC Freshman Pitcher of the Year awards in addition to earning a spot on the All-MAC First Team.
 
Taylor will oppose Notre Dame left-hander John Michael Bertrand, who is 7-2 with a 3.33 ERA.
 
Junior right-hander Jordan Patty, a Second Team All-MAC selection who is 8-2 with a 2.58 ERA, is scheduled to start the Chippewas' second tournament game. If CMU loses to Notre Dame, it will play the UConn-Michigan loser on Saturday at noon; if CMU beats Notre Dame, it will meet the UConn-Michigan winner on Saturday at 6 p.m.
 
Last Meeting
The Chippewas dropped an 8-4 decision at Notre Dame on April 13. The Chippewas, who ranked second in the MAC with a .973 fielding percentage, tied their season high with three errors in the game and two of Notre Dame's runs were unearned.
 
Accustomed to the Pressure
Because the MAC did not hold a league tournament this season, the 40-game regular season took on added importance. In previous years, the league's NCAA Tournament berth went to the league tournament champion.
 
CMU dropped its first two conference games, at Ohio, and then went 31-7 the rest of the way. The Chippewas won 32 of their final 40 games overall.
 
"You could feel a little different level of intensity at times, I think," Bischel said. "(Our players) handled it really well, but there's no doubt that in the back of your mind it had to play in a little bit. The entire dynamic to me, as a coach, even though you try to make it the same, felt night and day different."
 
Keystone Combo
The Chippewas have benefited tremendously in 2021 from the performance of transfers Mario Camilletti and Justin Simpson.
 
Camilletti, the leadoff hitter and second baseman, leads the nation with 60 walks and ranks 15th with a .512 on-base percentage. Simpson, the shortstop, may be as good as any ninth-place hitter in the nation. He is hitting .316 with 10 extra-base hits and boasts a .471 on-base percentage; Simpson leads the team with 44 RBIs and is third on the team with 42 walks.
 
Camilletti, a junior, transferred from Oakland; Simpson, a sophomore, is a California native who transferred from Golden West (Calif.) College. Simpson's brother, Aaron, is the starting center fielder at Ball State, which finished second behind the Chippewas in the MAC this season.
 
"(Justin Simpson) knew we were a good program because he was following the MAC a little bit," Bischel said. "He knew that this is a program that could win, and he knew that (we) needed some help in the middle infield.
 
"He had no idea how cold it really was (in Michigan). We kept that a secret from him. We sent him some pictures of a bunch of palm trees; he drank that Kool-Aid and we were able to get him on board.
 
"He's amazing. To Justin's credit, he was not the player that he is now when he got here. He had a lot of talent, a lot of work ethic. He has gotten better and better and better."
 
Camilletti and Simpson have combined to commit just 11 errors on the season and, naturally, were the critical cogs as CMU has turned 32 double plays.
 
"I don't know where we'd be without both of those guys," Bischel said.