SEARCY, Ark. – After dropping the first two games of the series on Friday at Harding, the Arkansas Tech baseball team needed to stave off the sweep on Saturday to put them in position for a share of the 2024 Great American Conference Regular Season Championship as the Wonder Boys would also need Southern Arkansas to pick up a game in their series at Arkansas-Monticello.
When all the dust settled on the day's action, the Wonder Boys handled their part with a 9-5 win over Harding; while SAU did theirs as well, winning the first game of their doubleheader at UAM, 6-2, thus giving Tech a share of their third GAC Regular Season Championship since 2014 and their 10
th overall.
All three of those GAC titles have come under head coach
Dave Dawson with the last two coming in the last four seasons.
With a three-way tie atop the conference standings between Tech, Harding and UAM, seeding for the upcoming GAC Tournament was established via tiebreakers. Since all three teams went 3-3 against one another in their conference series, tiebreaker No. 2 was put into effect which was record against the next highest opponent in the standings, which ended up being Henderson State.
As a result, UAM captured the top-seed after going 3-0 against the Reddies this season, while Tech became the No. 2-seed with a 2-1 record against Henderson and Harding the No. 3-seed as they went 1-2 versus HSU.
As the No. 2-seed in the tournament, the Wonder Boys will be at home for the opening round series this coming weekend and will take on the No. 7-seed in the tournament. The team occupying that spot has yet to be determined as the series between Southwestern Oklahoma and Northwestern Oklahoma will not conclude until Sunday afternoon. Should NWOSU win, the No. 7-seed would be Ouachita Baptist, but if SWOSU wins, the No. 7-seed will be NWOSU.
That best-of-three series is scheduled to start at 6 p.m on Friday, May 3 at Baswell Field on the campus of Arkansas Tech. Game two of the series will take place the following day at 1 p.m. with the "if necessary" game taking place about 30 minutes following.
