WILLIMANTIC, Conn. – For the second straight season, the No. 1 nationally-ranked Eastern Connecticut State University baseball team has been selected as a top regional tournament seed and will open its 36^th NCAA Division III tournament against Swarthmore College Friday at 11 a.m. at Towers Field on the campus of the University of Rochester.
 
Eastern (39-3) was one of 41 automatic qualifiers to the 60-team field announced today and will be joined at the Rochester, NY Regional by fourth-seeded Swarthmore (22-17), third-seeded Middlebury College (28-11) and second-seeded host Rochester (30-14). Swarthmore won the Centennial Conference tournament title and Middlebury the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) crown, while Rochester was one of 19 at-large qualifiers to the tournament after finishing second in the Liberty League playoffs last week.
 
Rochester and Middlebury will play the second game at 2:30 p.m. Friday. Saturday, Friday's losers will meet in an elimination game at 11 a.m., with the winners squaring off at 2:30. The winners' bracket victor will advance to Sunday's 11 a.m. title series needing one win to claim the title, while the winners' bracket loser will play the losers' bracket winner in an elimination game.
 
The Rochester Regional champion moves on to a best-of-three Super Regional showdown against the Annville, PA Regional champion May 27-28 for the right to advance to the eight-team national tournament June 3-7 at Perfect Game Field at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Cedar Rapids, IA. The Annville Regional includes Mitchell College, Rowan University, Washington & Jefferson College and host Lebanon Valley College.
 
Eastern has never faced Swarthmore or Rochester and has met Middlebury (alma mater of Eastern fourth-year head coach Brian Hamm) only once, winning, 14-3 on its Arizona spring trip in 2010. Eastern is the only team in the Rochester regional currently ranked in the D3baseball.com Top 25.
 
Swarthmore won the Centennial regular-season title with a 14-4 record and the top-seeded Garnet defeated fourth-seeded Johns Hopkins University, 8-1, in the first round of the conference tournament, and gained the automatic bid when the rest of the tournament was cancelled due to rain. Swarthmore has an overall NCAA record of 6-4, having qualified in 1985 and 2018. The Garnet head into their third NCAA tournament having won 12 of their last 14 this season. The team has a .305 batting average, .956 fielding average and 5.96 ERA.
 
Three Swarthmore regulars are batting better than .340 in Luke Mutz (.434), Paul Cooke (.383) and Austin Burgess (.343). A total of 21 different pitchers have logged at least one inning this year. Top starters are freshman Edward Berry (3-3, 3.04 ERA) and junior Matteo Sollecito (4-1, 3.74), with sophomore middle reliever Casey Jordan at 1-0 and a staff-best 1.93 ERA and senior Zach Camp having saved five games to go along with a 1-2 record and 5.37 ERA. All are right-handers. In the conference tournament game against Johns Hopkins, Sollecito pitched the first four hitless innings and Camp allowed only one run over the final 4 1/3 innings to gain the save.
 
A winner of 13 straight and 27 of its last 28, Eastern looks to snap a string of seven straight NCAA tournament losses. The Warrior have a .342 team batting average, .970 fielding average and 2.87 ERA and lead Division III in winning percentage (.929). The Warriors  share the Division III lead in walks and hits allowed per game (1.13), are ranked second nationally in least hits allowed per game (7.22), third in ERA, fourth in scoring (10.4), ninth in batting and 21^st in fielding average.
 
Senior righty Bryan Albee (Killingly) rates sixth nationally in ERA (1.23) and senior lefty Aidan Dunn (Westfield, MA) 14^th (1.63). Albee had a win and a save as the Little East Conference's Most Outstanding Player while Dunn pitched the first seven innings of the championship-game win. Albee is 10-0 with four saves and Dunn is 5-0, as is graduate righty Tommy Benincaso (Norwalk). Junior righty Billy Oldham (Brookfield) is 9-2 with a 2.27 ERA after shutting out the University of Southern Maine with a complete game in the second round of the conference tournament.
 
All nine Eastern starters are batting at least .318, with five at .340 or better. Eight of the nine are either seniors or graduate students. Senior All-America third baseman Luke Broadhurst (Stafford) is batting .432 with 101 total bases, 47 runs and 42 RBI; senior centerfielder Ryan Bagdasarian (Glastonbury) at .381 with 47 runs, 90 total bases and 36 RBI, senior catcher Matt Malcom (East Lyme) at .359 with 85 total bases, a team-high 51 RBI and 43 runs scored; senior DH Jack Rich (Meriden) .361 with 30 RBI; and graduate All-America John Mesagno (Tappan, NY) at .340 with a team-high 50 runs to go along with 96 total bases and 41 RBI.
 
Fourteen four-team double-elimination regionals will be conducted this weekend along with two two-team regionals which will conduct a best-of-five competition.