Baseball
Atlantic 10 Regular-Season Champion Rams To Face No. 4 Seed Dayton Thursday
May 25, 2005
DAYTON, Ohio - The University of Rhode Island baseball team enters the 2005 Atlantic 10 Championship as the two-time defending Atlantic 10 regular-season champions and the three-time Atlantic 10 East Division champions, having posted a 54-18 record in conference play over the last three years.
But the top-seeded Rams have something to prove when they begin play Thursday at noon against No. 4 seed Dayton.
Rhode Island is making its third-straight Atlantic 10 Championship appearance, but the Rams are still looking for their first NCAA Tournament bid. By winning three-straight games, Rhody would win the double-elimination, six-team tournament.
Dayton overcame a 4-0 first inning deficit to take an 8-5 victory over No. 5 seed Duquesne in the first game of the tournament.
As the top-seed in the 2004 Atlantic 10 Championship, Rhody made it to the conference finals, but lost on a fluke double play with the tying run in scoring position. The way last season ended left a sour taste in the players' mouths, and with all but one of the starters back for another shot at the title, the Rams want to be the team celebrating at the end of this year's A10 Championship.
Rhode Island got off to a slow start to the 2005 season, but won 17 of 18 from April 9 until May 5, including a 12-game winning streak, that dramatically righted the ship. Rhode Island has only lost back-to-back games once since April 6 and had a streak of 14-straight Atlantic 10 regular season series victories until Massachusetts snapped it by taking the rubber game of the final conference series of the year 6-5 in 14 innings.
Rhode Island won nine of its last 10 non-conference games, outscoring its opponents by a 96-24 margin in those 10 games. The Rams have only given up more than five runs in a game twice in their last 28 games and Rhode Island has a 9-3 record against teams in the Atlantic 10 Championship. The Rams took two of three games from Dayton in the first Atlantic 10 series of 2005, but all of that means nothing starting Thursday.
