On Feb. 23, being in a regional, any regional, would have seemed far-fetched for the Xavier Musketeers baseball team.
The team sat at 0-5 after a four-game sweep at Oregon and a loss at Lousiville. After that, the Musketeers went a robust 37-18 for the season to earn a 3-seed for the regional.
The Musketeers finished second in the Big East with a 14-7 conference record and had to beat regular-season champion UConn three times to win the conference tournament.
Like the Ducks, Xavier doesn’t exactly play station-to-station baseball. It likes to hit the ball a long way and the Musketeers will be looking to do just that in Nashville.
As a team, Xavier has hit 88 home runs this year. In comparison, Oregon has hit one more homer for a program record of 89. But the Ducks do put the ball in play more often. The Ducks have a team batting average of an even .300, while the Musketeers come in hitting .278.
Matthew Deprey and Jared Cushing both lead Xavier with 14 homers a piece. Both are also hitting .286 for the season. Their leading hitter is Andrew Walker with a .329 average, seven home runs and he leads the team with 53 runs batted in.
Xavier has used a weekend rotation of Ethan Bosacker, Brent Alazaus and Luke Hoskins. Odds are the Musketeers will go with Bosacker to go against the Ducks with his 7-4 record and 3.83 earned run average. He started on opening day and was outstanding at PK Park. Bosacker went seven innings, giving up just one run on a grand total of two hits and he struck out six.
Oregon and Xavier will begin the Nashville Regional at 10 am PST on ESPN+.