BROOKINGS – The South Dakota State baseball team will begin postseason play tomorrow. The Jackrabbits are the No. 3 seed in the Summit League Tournament and will play No. 2 seeded Oral Roberts, who is hosting the tournament, at 6 p.m. in Tulsa.

SDSU finished the regular season with an overall record of 22-21 and went 13-9 in conference play. The Jacks and Golden Eagles played a three-game series this past weekend and ORU won two of the three games. SDSU went 1-5 against ORU this season, but Jackrabbit head coach Rob Bishop feels confident in his team going into the tournament.

“We’re all familiar with each other in the league, so I don’t really think it matters [that we just played them],” Bishop said. “They know a lot about our team and we know a lot about their team. This will be our seventh meeting this year, so we’re definitely familiar. I still think it just comes down to who plays the best baseball. 

“I was definitely glad that played better and got a win [in the last game against them]. I felt like we could have won the first game, they kind of beat us up in the second one. I feel as confident as we can feel. The last 25 games we’ve played really good baseball. As good as any other team.”

SDSU had a tough time in the beginning of its season as the Jacks went 6-15 in their first 21 games. Since then, SDSU has gone 16-6 and Bishop said it’s been impressive to see how his team has grown throughout the season.

“We’ve been playing .700 baseball over 20 games. We have so many young guys, especially on the mound, that have had to be pushed into big roles and guys that either struggled early or we had some injuries early where we had to kind of plug some guys in, and those guys have responded tremendously. They’ve stayed with it, and a lot of the guys that struggled early have really come out of it,” Bishop said.

The Jacks have two guys hitting over .300 with junior catcher and outfielder Ryan McDonald leading the way at .324. He also has 34 runs batted in and 10 home runs. Junior shortstop Luke Ira is hitting .303 and has 32 RBIs and 10 home runs. 

Graduate senior outfielder Henry George has caught fire over the last three weeks. In his past seven games he is hitting .481 with eight RBIs, eight extra base hits and three home runs. George is hitting .298 on the season with 16 RBIs.

Bishop said he thinks his team’s offense has really hit its stride as a of late.

“If you look at our team offense in league play, we’re slugging at the top. We’re averaging over six runs a game and had a 19-game streak where we had at least one home run and it was a lot of different guys. We’ve hit a lot of doubles and a lot of home runs, and we’ve had two or three guys that have been efficient in stealing bases. I think we know who we are and you’re always going to have, in a game of failure, some guys that are hot and some guys that are cold. We just need everyone to contribute in some shape or form,” he said.

Graduate senior pitcher Cody Carlson has had back-to-back impressive starts. He pitched a complete game shutout against St. Thomas on May 15 and only gave up two hits with eight strikeouts. Over the weekend against ORU he pitched five innings and gave up one run on five hits with three strikeouts and no walks. His earned run average for the season is 3.71, which is sixth in the Summit League.

Bishop said the key for SDSU being successful this weekend will be limiting walks and errors. Something the Jacks struggled with a little bit in this past series with ORU.

“It’s huge [to limit errors and walks]. I mean free bases win and lose you games in the regular season, but it’s magnified, especially the first couple games of the tournament. Generally the pitching is really, really good and the games are highly contested, so extra walks or extra errors or any of those things that cost you bases, whoever wins that battle, usually wins the game,” Bishop said.

ORU comes into the tournament with an overall record of 35-18 and went 17-7 in Summit League play. The Golden Eagles have both the top offense and pitching staff in the conference as they hit .300 as a team and have a team ERA of 4.09. 

Senior pitcher AJ Archambo leads the team in batting with a .364 (24-66) average, which is third in the Summit League. Junior Jackson Loftin is right behind Archambo at .347 with 10 home runs and 49 RBIs. Sophomore infielder Caleb Denny is hitting .333 with 10 home runs and 54 RBIs.

Senior Ledgend Smith is the top pitcher for ORU and leads the conference in ERA with a 1.70. He’s started 12 games and has a record of 7-4. Smith is second in the Summit League in strikeouts with 89.

Oral Roberts has won the Summit League Tournament 19 times and had won four-straight until Omaha won it in 2019 and North Dakota State won last season. This will be the fifth time in the past six seasons that the Golden Eagles have hosted the tournament in Tulsa. The regular season champion from the season before gets to host the tournament.

Bishop said he thinks ORU does a great job of hosting and he’s excited to get back down there and play.

“[ORU] always does a great job hosting the tournament. Baseball is really important at ORU and they’ll just do terrific job with all of the peripheral things in the tournament. They have a great facility and obviously you’re going to have great weather. … We don’t really care where it’s played, but ORU always does a really good job of hosting it and we’re really looking forward to heading back down,” Bishop said.

Four teams make the conference tournament in the Summit League. No. 1 seeded North Dakota State (30-17, 17-5) will play No. 4 Omaha (24-29, 12-12) at noon on Wednesday.

The tournament is a double elimination format. The losers of the first two games will play in an elimination game on Thursday at noon, while the winners will play at 6 p.m. with the winner going advancing to the championship on Saturday. The winner of the first game on Thursday will play the loser of the second game at 4 p.m. on Friday with the winner of that advancing to the championship, but that team will have to win two games on Saturday to win the tournament.

Bishop said he thinks this is the most competitive the league has been at the top since he’s been at SDSU and that anyone of the four teams in the tournament have a chance to win it.

“No doubt [it’s been close between the top-four teams this season]. I think a couple things have happened. ORU had such a long stretch of dominance before 2019 and the rest of the team’s in the league have responded and we’ve all improved to kind of get to that level. And then this year you had a lopsided schedule and didn’t play everyone at home and on the road, so you’re going to have advantage advantages and disadvantages every year with that. I felt like the lopsided schedule made everything really tight and there’s not much of a difference to me between the top-four teams,” Bishop said.

You can watch all of the tournament games on Midco Sports Network Plus and listen to SDSU games on AM 910 or the Jackrabbit Sports Network.