INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The NCAA Division III Baseball Championship National Committee announced the 2024 regional championship brackets in a live selection show on NCAA.com Monday afternoon, awarding the 10th-ranked Christopher Newport baseball team a four-team pod to host at Captains Park this weekend.
The Captains (26-9) will open the tournament on Friday, May 17 at 10:00 a.m. against Immaculata University (26-16) after the other first-round matchup pits the University of Scranton (30-11) against North Carolina Wesleyan University (33-11) at approximately 1:30 p.m.
The double-elimination bracket will feature two games on Friday, three on Saturday, and one, or two if necessary, championship games on Sunday. Game times on Saturday includes an 8:30 a.m. elimination game before the two winning teams from day one play at Noon followed by another elimination game at 2:30 p.m. On Sunday, the championship game is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. with the “if necessary” game scheduled for approximately 2:30 p.m.
Ticket prices for admission to Captains Park is $10 for adults and $5 for seniors, children, and students. Tickets will be purchased using cash only. CNU students will be admitted free of charge with a valid ID. For fans unable to attend in person, live stats and a live video webcast will be available at CNUsports.com.
Christopher Newport, the 2024 Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Champions, earned an at-large berth into the postseason and will make the program’s 12th all-time NCAA Tournament appearance. It will be the third time that CNU has served as host of an NCAA regional after welcoming teams to Newport News in 2012 and 2019.
All four teams heading to Captains Park won their respective conference championships as the C2C champs will be joined by Immaculata, the title winning team of the Atlantic East, Scranton, the Landmark Conference Champions, and N.C. Wesleyan, who captured the 2024 USA South Athletic Conference bid. The N.C. Wesleyan Battling Bishops were ranked No. 19 in the most recent D3baseball.com Top 25 poll released on May 6.
CNU will be making the team’s third straight NCAA postseason appearance after reaching the regional title game against Marietta in 2022 and making the same exit against Shenandoah in 2023. Immaculata is making its third straight and third overall selection to the NCAA Tournament while, Scranton is making the team’s second all-time appearance ever for the program and two-time NCAA Division III champion North Carolina Wesleyan will mark the team’s 24th all-time showing.
This season, Christopher Newport features one of the nation’s top pitching staffs as the Captains lead Division III with 11.3 strikeouts per nine innings and rank seventh in the nation with a 3.50 team ERA. Led by C2C Pitcher of the Year Dylan Weber (9-1, 1.35 ERA), the Captains’ arms also rank eighth in strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.82). Weber is one of the top pitchers in the nation, ranking sixth in ERA while leading the country in total strikeouts with 118. Offensively, CNU is led by Lincoln Lubsen, who ranks in the top-25 in RBI per game this season and boasts a team-high 47 for the Captains lineup this year.
Captains Park was opened in 2004 and seats a capacity crowd of over 1,000 with 800 bleacher and chairback seats along with berm seating down both the first- and third-base lines. The advancing team from the regional championship will advance to the Super Regional next weekend against the winning team from the Dallas, Pa. Regional hosted by Misericordia University.
