CHILLICOTHE, Ohio – Senior shortstop Tyler Chumita crushed a game-tying home run and junior pinch hitter Dane Camphausen tattooed a go-ahead double off the wall in left field, as The College of Wooster baseball team forced the winner-take-all game of the North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament with a 5-4 win on Sunday at VA Memorial Stadium. A school-record performance by Denison senior right-hander Kenny Lippman and a five-run second inning were too much for the Scots in the decisive game, which was won by the Big Red 8-1.

Denison (33-9), which won its third-straight NCAC Tournament, earned the conference's automatic berth to the NCAA Div. III Regional Tournament. The full field will be announced on Monday, May 16 at approximately 12 p.m. ET, and Wooster is hopeful it will see its name as one of the 18 Pool C (at-large) teams.

Lost balls in the sun played a huge factor in both games. In game one, Denison shortstop Owen Wilson lost a shallow fly ball and that enabled Wooster first-year third baseman Nick Pett to reach on a one-out double in the eighth inning. Camphausen, pinch hitting, then blasted his two-bagger off the wall just inside the foul line and Pett scored on the play with the go-ahead run. Later in the inning, senior center fielder Ben Gbur singled through the left side in what held as the needed insurance run.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Denison left fielder Danny Alvarez made it 5-4 with an RBI single up the middle that put runners on the corners. Senior Mitchell Reardon, on in relief for Wooster, recorded the final out when right fielder Jake Welsch's fly ball found the glove of Wooster senior Ben Hines in right field. Gbur took over from there and recorded his third save of the tournament with a scoreless ninth inning.

Gbur led off the first game with a double down the left field line, then touched home for the 70th time of the season when Hines deposited an RBI single into left field. Of note, it marked the sixth 70-run season in program history and first since 2018 American Baseball Coaches Association Div. III Position Player of the Year Michael Wielansky touched home a national-leading 76 times that year.

Denison tied game one with back-to-back RBI hits off the bats of center fielder Eric Colaco and first baseman Dylan Hunter in the third inning, then took the lead in the fourth when designated hitter Daniel Spencer found the gap in right. Denison's 3-2 lead stood until Chumita clubbed a seventh-inning home run to right field. On the knock, Chumita, who ranks third in Div. III RBI this spring, tied three-time All-American Rick Sforzo's single-season school record with RBI 77.

Defensively, a 6-4-3 double play allowed Wooster to erase a leadoff walk in the sixth inning, and the Scots escaped a bases-loaded jam in the seventh when Reardon struck out second baseman Josh Bohn.

Reardon (5-6) worked 1 1/3 innings of relief, allowing a run on two hits. Prior to that, juniors Owen Barnard, Ryan Sullivan, and Dean Brown fired 3 2/3 innings of scoreless relief in support of sophomore starter Corey Knauf.

George Viebrock (2-1) took the loss. The right-hander, who pitched two scoreless innings against the Scots on Friday, allowed three runs in his 1 2/3 innings of work on Sunday.

Lippman's dominance was the storyline in the winner-take-all game. The senior's 14 strikeouts broke Denison's 18-year-old single-game school record. Lippman struck out the side in the second and seventh innings and fanned a pair in the fifth and sixth frames.

Hines' drive that caromed off the wall in center field was the offensive highlight of game two for Wooster. The big bounce back enabled the Scots' right fielder to motor around to third base with a triple, and senior left fielder Dominic Stilliana, who walked to start the inning, scored to make it a 6-1 game.

Wilson had the good sun break this time around, as his third-inning fly out-turned triple was lost in the sun, and that led to a five-spot for Denison, which took the lead on Charlie Glennon's RBI groundout in the second. Spencer's two-run single to center capped the five-run third, then the Big Red added insurance runs in the sixth and eighth innings.

Lippman improved to 6-1 on the year with the complete-game effort, while Wooster junior Christian Johnston fell to 3-1 after allowing five runs on six hits in two innings.

Chumita went 4-for-9 on the day with the RBI to lead Wooster's offense, which had 14 hits over the twin bill.

Colaco and Wilson both had four hits for Denison over the championship round. The Big Red tallied 20 base knocks on the day.

Brown, Chumita, Gbur, and Stilliana were named to the NCAC All-Tournament Team, as was Lippman (MVP), Bohn, Colaco, and Taylor Perrett for Denison. DePauw University's Kyle Callahan and Nick Nelson and Wittenberg University's Jack Siefert rounded out the all-tournament team.