May 31, 2004
George Mason may not have won the Colonial Athletic Association Baseball Tournament, but their fabulous season did not go unrewarded. On Monday, the Patriots were offered an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament which begins on Friday, June 4.
The Patriots will travel to the Charlottesville, Va. regional where they will be the No. 3 seed and take on No. 2 Vanderbilt in the first round. The Virginia Cavaliers are the tournament's top seed and they will face No. 4 Princeton in the first round. Game times will be determined at a later date, but the Patriots will likely play at 3 p.m. on Friday.
The Patriots (39-17) have already seen Virginia (42-13) once this year, holding a late-inning lead before falling to the Cavaliers, 9-5. They are the only team in the regional that the Patriots have faced this year.
In Vanderbilt (42-17), the Patriots will see a team with some excellent pitching, as they have a staff ERA of 3.14. Their top two starters are Ryan Mullins, who is 8-2 with a 2.49 ERA, and Jeremy Sowers, who is 9-5 with a 2.75 ERA. Jensen Lewis has started 10 of the 19 games in which he has pitched and he has a 6-4 mark with a 3.15 ERA while Matt Buschmann has started eight of 25 games to go 7-1 with a 3.13 ERA. Ryan Rote paces the bullpen with 11 saves.
The Commodores also have one of the nation's more dangerous hitters in Warner Jones, who is batting .417 on the year with 100 hits, 51 runs, 10 homers, 26 doubles and 69 RBI. His batting average is among the top 10 in the nation. Cesar Nicolas is the top power hitter with a .332 average, 14 homers and 65 RBI.
The Commodores are a battle-tested team, having played in the SEC, which received a tournament-record nine bids. Vanderbilt lost in the SEC Tournament finals, falling to South Carolina, which is the second-seed nationally.
Of the other 63 teams in the tournament, the Patriots have faced six of them and run off a 4-7 record. Fellow CAA school UNC Wilmington earned the conference's automatic bid. The Patriots were 2-2 against them. The other teams the Patriots faced (and Mason's record this year against them) are Virginia (0-1), Coastal Carolina (0-2), South Carolina (0-1), N.C. State (1-1) and College of Charleston (1-0).
