Wittenberg Baseball Earns First NCAA Tournament Berth Since 1994
For the first time in more than 30 years, Wittenberg Baseball has broken through as the Tigers have been selected to compete in the NCAA Division III Tournament for the second time in program history. Wittenberg will open its quest for an NCAA Division III baseball championship with an opening game against Webster on Friday, May 15, on the campus of Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan.
Wittenberg is one of four teams that will be competing at the Adrian Regional. The top-seeded Tigers are joined by the host and second-seeded Bulldogs, the champion of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA), fourth-seeded Webster, the champion of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC), and third-seeded North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) rival DePauw. All games will be played in Adrian's Nicolay Field.
The winner of the Adrian Regional will advance to the NCAA Super Regionals and take on the winner of the UW-Whitewater Regional. The team that emerges from the Super Regional will advance to the NCAA Division III College World Series, hosted by the NCAC and the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission May 29-June 4 at Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake, Ohio. UW-Whitewater is the defending national champion.
Wittenberg advanced to the 2026 NCAA Division III Tournament by virtue of an at-large berth after finishing second in the NCAC regular season standings and runner-up in the league's tournament. The Tigers boast the top team batting average in all of Division III, checking in at .387, a phenomenal 23 percentage points higher than any other team, and the 2026 team has practically re-written the program's record books, including a host of long-standing team and individual offensive marks.
"Today is an exciting day for our program," said Wittenberg Head Coach Mitchell Griffiths, who has a 60-23 record in two seasons leading the Tigers. "Finally breaking through and earning a spot in the NCAA Regional for the first time in over 30 years is truly special. I'm incredibly happy for our current players, as well as all the former players who helped build this program and put us in this position.
"We're looking forward to heading to Adrian and competing against three outstanding teams for a regional championship."
Wittenberg enters the national competition with an overall record of 31-11, including an NCAC regular season mark of 12-4. After competing against a challenging regular season schedule, the Tigers have a record of 7-9 against teams that earned berths in the NCAA Division III Tournament. Wittenberg is one of three NCAC teams to make the field, joining No. 1-ranked Denison, which won the NCAC regular season and tournament titles, and DePauw, which split a pair of one-run games with the Tigers in the NCAC Tournament.
Wittenberg Baseball has been an intercollegiate athletics program at Wittenberg dating back more than a century, with records available starting in the 1950s. Since the introduction of NCAA Division III prior to the 1973-74 school year, the Tigers have earned a spot in the national competition just once. In 1994, under the direction of Head Coach Rick Willis, the Tigers split four games at a regional hosted by the College of Wooster, beating Marietta and the host Scots to start the competition before dropping a pair to Wooster and bowing out.
Written By: Ryan Maurer