Cougars hope to parlay strong regular season into Peach Belt tournament championship

The Columbus State baseball team heads into the Peach Belt Conference tournament this week on a torrid streak and also with a regular-season championship under their belt.

Prior to dropping their final regular-season game against UNC-Pembroke, the Cougars had reeled off a whopping 17 consecutive victories, finishing the season at 39-11, 23-7 in conference play.

“It’s a good accomplishment because it’s chock full of good baseball teams, but it’s just one stepping stone toward the goals that we have,” said CSU coach Greg Appleton, who was named the PBC Coach of the Year on Tuesday night. “We want to win the regional and try to get into the World Series and try to play for a national championship.”

Five Cougars were recognized for their play this season by the PBC, with Ryan Ihle, Brandon Koehler, Mike McClellan, Blake Edwards and Jackson Oliver all named to the All-PBC first team.

A huge key to CSU’s success this season has been their high octane offense. The Cougars led all of NCAA Division II this season with 509 runs scored and were second with 633 hits. Despite the gaudy power hitting numbers, they’re not just hacking at every pitch at the plate either — their .349 team batting average is good for eighth-best with seniors Mike McClellan (.431) and Ryan Ihle (.413) both above the .400 plateau individually.

“I just take it pitch by pitch, at-bat by at-bat, whatever I can do to help the team win,” said McClellan, who also led all Cougars with 18 home runs on the season. “The offense has been led by seniors up and down the lineup. I’ve been getting that one pitch I’ve been looking for, and I’ve done great with it.”

“I can’t even explain it. I’ve never played on a team like this,” Ihle said. “To have 1 through 9 do as much damage as anyone else in the lineup is unbelievable. I hope it continues on. It’s worked for us up until now, so we may as well stick to our strengths, producing a lot of runs and playing some good defense.”

CSU is more than just a power-hitting team, Appleton said.

“I don’t think it’s a system we have, it’s just the type of players we have,” Appleton said. “People look at us and think we’re just a power team, but we’ve got guys who can run, we’ve got guys who can bunt. We can score in different ways. We do have some power, too, and that makes it better.

“The power is the fun thing to watch, but we’ve stolen some bases and we’ve got some bunts down and played the way we needed to. We just seem to have a knack to score when we need to, especially late in games.”

“Sometimes we do play small ball and it helps a lot,” McClellan added, “and sometimes the guy behind will hit a double in the gap and knock them in too.”

The Cougars have also been one of the best fielding teams in Division II, with their .973 fielding percentage eighth-best among all teams, averaging just a shade over one error per contest at 51 in 50 games played.

The batting and defense balances out the pitching, which has been the Cougars’ Achilles heel at times this season.

“Thank God we score runs and play defense, because we give up runs,” Appleton said. “This team has taken it in stride, and done what they needed to do. If we need to score 10 runs, we score 10 runs. Unfortunately at times, we’ve had to do that.”

“(The offensive players) back me up with run support, and I have a great defense behind me as well,” said Brandon Koehler, who at 9-1 is the ace of the CSU starting pitchers. “We’ve got guys making plays and hitters doing what they need to do. It takes the pressure off a lot.”

For the first time this year, the Peach Belt adopted a pool play style tournament rather than a single or double-elimination bracket, mirroring the format the Atlantic Coast Conference uses for its baseball championship. CSU joins North Georgia, Augusta, and Georgia College in their pool and will play each of them once, facing North Georgia Wednesday at 11 a.m., Augusta Thursday at 7 p.m., and Georgia College Friday at 11 a.m. The tournament will be held in Florence, S.C. on the campus of Francis Marion University, which did not make the PBC tournament.

“It’s going to be different,” Appleton said of the new format. “I wish I could tell you what it’s going to be like, but I’ve never played in a tourney like this before.”

Appleton likes his chances with the format and a senior-laden team.

“We’ve had guys who have been starters for three and four years and they know the drill,” he said. “It does make your job easier. As coaches, we’re always looked upon as the main leaders on the club, but when you have guys who have been around who take that role and run with it, it makes the job a lot easier.”

Notes: While the Cougars finished ahead of Lander for the PBC championship, Lander is ahead of CSU for the top seed in the Southeastern Region heading into the PBC tournament. The top seeded team will host the seven-team regional tournament, with the No. 1 team receiving a bye — a very lucrative position for a team to be able to win two games and advance to the Division II World Series.

This story was originally published May 10, 2016 at 10:08 PM with the headline "Cougars hope to parlay strong regular season into Peach Belt tournament championship."