Mid-American Conference

AVON, Ohio --  Jordan Patty struck out six over eight innings and Griffin Lockwood-Powell hit a two-run homer in the first inning as the Central Michigan baseball team defeated Ball State, 6-0, on Saturday night to win the Mid-American Conference Tournament at Sprenger Stadium.
 

"It's pretty surreal," said Jordan Bischel. "I haven't even been here a year and to be blessed to coach this group of kids and the way they bought in to what we're doing and to have the assistant coaches we have, I mean, I'm pretty speechless. What our kids have done this year is really, really special and I'm really proud of them. Pretty cool stuff."

 
The tournament title, and resulting berth in the NCAA Tournament, is CMU's first since 1995. The regular-season MAC crown was the Chippewas' first since 2015. It marks the first time that the Chippewas have swept the two league crowns in the same season.
 
"I don't think anybody on this team was born the last time we made a regional," Lockwood-Powell said. "This is really huge."
 
The Chippewas will learn their NCAA Regional destination on Monday when the tournament field is announced.
 
"We'll enjoy this for a day or two," Bischel said. "Thankfully we'll have a little break here before we play next week. We want to represent the MAC well. The teams that we had to get by to get (to the NCAA Tournament) are pretty talented, pretty good teams. We owe it to all of those teams to go out there and compete our tails off. We're going to have a formidable opponent, obviously, but we're going to feel good that we can compete with whoever that is."

Saturday's win was CMU's 18th consecutive, its longest winning streak since 1985. The Chippewas have won 32 of 37 starts since dropping a 12-11 decision at Ohio on March 23. They opened the tournament on Thursday with an 18-9 victory over sixth-seeded Ohio, and then downed Ball State, the No. 2 seed, on Friday, 8-2.