'Why not us?' Arizona Christian baseball ready for its 1st NAIA World Series
Arizona Christian's baseball team returns to Lewiston, Idaho, this weekend for the NAIA World Series, after winning the Lewiston Bracket last week in dramatic fashion.
Right fielder Jared Anderson's home run in the ninth inning walked off an 8-7 win over British Columbia, a game in which ACU trailed 6-0 and never led until the end, that punched the school's first World Series ticket.
The team (36-19) might feel like it is floating back to Idaho this week after that. This is a team that nobody expected to get there.
"Why not us?" coach Joe McDonald said. "Our motto from day one was, 'The year of the dog pile.' The players immediately told me to spell it 'D-A-W-G,' because they're a bunch of dawgs. Why not us? Heading into the regional, nobody picked us to win that. We went in with nothing to lose. There's a lot of belief. We're feeling blessed to be one of the 10 teams in the country. God blessed us to have this opportunity."
Arizona Christian, a Glendale-based university, is the opening act Friday at 8:35 a.m., playing Wesleyan (Kansas). The double-elimination tournament goes until May 31. The Firestorm went 3-0 at the regional to advance.
They have two strikeout pitchers in Eli Elliott (99 strikeouts in 76 innings) and Adrian Santa Cruz (100 strikeouts in 70.1 innings). Santa Cruz, who will take the ball in the second game, led the team with nine wins. Elliott has won seven games.
This isn't something new for Santa Cruz, who went to the junior college World Series with Phoenix College two years ago. That Phoenix College team lost the first game, won the second, then got eliminated in the third.
"I like the environment that it brings," said Santa Cruz. "JUCO was my first taste of it. Then when I went over to California and played in the Big West Conference, it was pretty much like that every weekend. I kind of got used to it there."
Santa Cruz beat the No. 1 seed last week in the regional, throwing a complete-game three-hitter in an 11-0 rout of nationally ranked No. 5 Lewis-Clark State College, in the second game of the tournament. In the first round, ACU knocked off No. 21 nationally ranked Oklahoma City University 10-3.
Then came the dramatic comeback win over RV University of British Columbia.
"We feel good against any of the other nine teams at this point," McDonald said. "To knock off Oklahoma City, who has been ranked in the Top 25 all season. To knock off LC State, who has been in the top five in the country all year. And British Columbia has been in the polls."
In 2020, when COVID ended the college baseball season, McDonald ran every day until he reached 1,196 miles, all but a mile the distance to get to Lewiston. It was a symbolic run to the NAIA World Series. He said when the bus approaches the site, he is going to get off and run the last mile. He accomplished that Tuesday.
"We're going to stop before we get to the stadium, and then I'm going to officially finish the run," McDonald said. "We were there last week, but I was waiting for the World Series. I'm going to throw on my shirt. The guys all know the story. They asked me if I was going to finish the run. I said, 'Yup, I'm going to finish it.' "
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Christian baseball ready for 1st NAIA World Series appearance
