Throughout the course of the 2011 season, MVNU senior pitcher Steve Miller will write a weekly blog about what is happening with the baseball team.

"AMC Tournament Champs" (posted on May 9, 2011)

Wow, what a week! The conference tournament - where anything can happen...and it did. The week started out a little slow as we could only play one game on Tuesday due to the rain. We took on Malone, hoping the rain would hold off and it did. We knew coming in to the tournament that things were going to be a little hectic. We were playing the first two days of the tournament at our home field since Point Park could not find a field that was suitable to play. Hopefully, this would not distract us from our task at hand. Malone was going to be hungry to get back at us for taking three of four games from them just a few days earlier. Before the game, Coach reminded us that it was still the same game we had been playing all year, but now we just need to make sure we went out and played the way we knew how to.

To our liking, Malone threw their number one pitcher against us, who we hit around pretty good the week before. Once again, we took care of business against him and won 5-2 behind a great pitching performance from Kyle Barr. Offensively, Josh Roberts and Kodi Veale had a pair of hits, and we had some good momentum into the second day. Things were looking good so far for the Cougars, but now we had to wait from Malone and Point Park to play Wednesday morning. We knew we would be playing Point Park - we just didn't know if it was going to be with Malone already out of the tournament or if we could knock Point Park out ourselves.

Malone ended up losing late in the ball game so now it came down to a best-of-three series with Point Park, who was the No. 1 seed and ranked No. 23 in the nation. We came out swinging and took a 3-0 lead in the first inning and never looked back. We ended up winning 9-3 behind another great pitching performance, this time from Caleb Wright. Mike Hendren, Steve Williams and Chaz Gibson all three had a pair of hits and we had all nine starters get a hit. That is a great testament to the balance of our batting order. Once again Caleb threw great against them and once again they were complaining about how skinny he is and how slow he throws. No matter how skinny he is or how slow he throws, he had them on their heels the entire day and made easy work of the Point Park hitters. In 16 innings against them this year, he only gave up nine hits and three runs. Pretty impressive!

Now came the circus part of the tournament. Since Point Park thought their field would magically repel water, they headed back home to play at their home field on Thursday. Well, apparently they thought wrong and they cancelled the games and scheduled them for Friday. Now we had a day off and some time to think about what was going to be the final day of the tournament. Coach made sure to keep us on our toes and not to make excuses about what was going on. Whatever their coach's game-plan was, it didn't really work out for them too well in the end.

We had to win one game Friday to get an automatic berth into the NAIA Opening Round. After some hard-fought pitching by Grant Martin and myself, we just couldn't seem to put enough runs on the board to be on top. We pounded out 12 hits with three from Jordan Doherty and two from Steve and Jeff Stone, but we fell 7-5.

The second game was a win or go home game for both teams. This game was about as up and down as you could imagine. Everything on the scoresheet indicated that we played better that game. We had 13 hits and they had six. We only had one error and they had two. We struck out 10 batters they struck out two. But we only won the game by one run. It seemed that most of our hits were with one or two outs and we only had two extra-base hits. We just couldn't seem to string a few hits together and put more runs on the board. But Jerrob Decker worked through three innings and then the biggest surprise came from Timmy Harvey's left arm. He had been reliable all year out of the bullpen, but this time he came in and went six innings only giving up two hits and striking out six Point Park hitters - three of which came by a three-up three-down, strikeout looking inning. We were told all year that you never know when you will have your chance to make a significant mark on the team and Timmy made sure not to miss his chance. He had been great all year and we all just jumped on his back as he carried us on the mound and to a conference championship. Jordan, Mike, Ian Durbin and Chaz all had multiple hit games and Ian even legged out a triple.

The best part of the whole game was the very end. After we got what we thought was a double play reversed, we then had the very next pitch grounded right back to Jordan at short where he turned the double play himself and we all stormed the field. Once again Rob Audia has some pictures on the web and he captured some great moments for the Cougar baseball team.

Now it is on to Tennessee as we play in the NAIA Opening Round. Our first game is against Iowa Wesleyan on Thursday and we will see what we can do in the five-team, double-elimination tournament. Thanks again for all your support Cougar Fans. We hope to see some of you in Tennessee!

Check out this album of pictures taken by Rob Audia - AMC Champions

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