Whitworth baseball heads to D-III tournament -- opening against host Laverne -- on heels of wild NWC tourney win

Whitworth is back in the NCAA District III baseball tournament for the first time in nearly a decade.

The Pirates (29-16), who pulled off an unlikely comeback to win the Northwest Conference tournament championship over the weekend in Forest Grove, Ore., learned Monday they’ll play host La Verne on Friday in the first round of the four-team double elimination regional. The Leopards (34-9) won the the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular-season title before winning the SCIAC tournament.

The other two schools in the regional field are Pomona-Pitzer (30-15), runners up in the SCIAC tournament, and McMurry University (32-11), an at-large entry from the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

Whitworth is making its fourth D-III tournament appearance and first since 2016. The Pirates also qualified in 2012 and 2015.

A postseason berth seemed like a longshot for Whitworth just days ago. After dropping their opening game to Puget Sound on Friday, the second-seeded Pirates stormed through the losers’ bracket with wins over Linfield and UPS behind pitcher Quintin O’Connor. The right-hander threw three scoreless innings to earn a save in a 7-3 victory over Linfield in the first game, and followed with a five-hit complete game win in a 7-1 decision over UPS.

Needing two wins in Saturday’s championship against top-seeded Pacific, Whitworth got a pair of clutch pitching performances by freshmen Nathaniel Kurano and Rylen Blair to defeat the Boxers 8-5 in the first game and 7-1 in the finale to win its first NWC tournament title since 2015.

“This team was ready for any opportunity that was presented today,” Whitworth coach CJ Perry said after Saturday’s win. “There was never a doubt in our dugout that we were going to win because everybody was pulling for one another.”

Whitworth became the first school to win the NWC title after dropping its first game since Linfield did it in 2017.