Cortland Baseball Earns 33rd Straight NCAA Berth; Red Dragons Second Seed at Denison Regional May 15-17
Cortland Sports Information Department
The Cortland baseball team has received a berth into the 64-team NCAA Division III playoffs for the 33rd straight season and the 34th time overall. The Red Dragons will be the second seed at a four-team, double-elimination regional Friday through Sunday, May 15-17, hosted by Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Cortland (29-10-1), ranked 25th nationally by D3baseball.com, will face third-seeded and nationally 22nd-ranked Kalamazoo College (Mich.) (31-11) at 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Nationally top-ranked Denison (40-1) will play fourth-seeded Grinnell (25-16) in the opening game Friday at 11 a.m. The regional will continue with three games Saturday and a championship round of one or two games Sunday.
The winner of the regional will face the winner of the regional hosted by Centre College (Ky.) in a best-of-three super regional May 22-23, with that winner advancing to the NCAA Division III World Series May 29-June 4 at Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake, Ohio. The championship will be in Eastlake for the third straight year.
Cortland, led by 27th-year head coach Joe Brown, earned an NCAA automatic berth after repeating as the champion of the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) tournament at home last weekend. After beating Oneonta in a SUNYAC best-of-three games semifinal series, two games to one, May 1-2, the Red Dragons won in three games versus Oswego in the conference best-of-three championship series May 8-9. Cortland split the first two games versus the Lakers on Friday, falling 11-1 and winning 11-5, before winning the decisive game Saturday, 4-3, on an RBI single in the bottom of the ninth.
Cortland's run of 33 straight national tournament appearances (1993-2019, 2021-26, no tourney in 2020) extends its all-time NCAA Division III record. The Red Dragons also boast the longest active national tournament streak on any NCAA level.
Cortland has won 16 regional titles (1995, 1997-2001, 2005, 2007-08, 2010, 2012, 2014-16, 2019, 2021). Of those, 15 sent the Red Dragons to the World Series. In 2019, Cortland hosted and won a four-team regional before losing in a super regional at Babson in the first year the regional/super regional format was employed. In 2021, Cortland won a six-team regional in Auburn, N.Y. to advance to the World Series as the NCAA playoffs featured a reduced field and temporarily reverted back to a regional/World Series format due to COVID-19 concerns. Cortland hosted regionals three straight years from 2022-24, placing second in 2022 and 2023 and third in 2024. Last season, Cortland was the second seed in a regional at Kean and finished second with a 2-2 record.
Cortland won the 2015 national title and finished second in both 2005 and 2010. The Red Dragons have also placed third nationally four times (1997, 1998, 2016, 2021) and fourth twice (2007, 2012) among their 15 World Series trips.
Kalamazoo earned an NCAA at-large berth after finishing 1-2 at the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) tournament. The Hornets are playing in the NCAA tournament for the third time, with previous showings in 2016 and 2022. They are an at-large selection for the first time.
Denison enters regional play on an astounding 39-game winning streak. The Big Red lost their second game of the year (4-1 to Salisbury) and haven't been beaten since. Denison clinched the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) title and an NCAA automatic berth with a 14-8 win over Wittenberg in the title game.
Grinnell is making its first-ever NCAA appearance. The Pioneers won the Midwest Conference tournament with three victories, capped by a 16-3 win in seven innings versus Illinois College in the championship round.
Cortland has never played against either Kalamazoo and Grinnell. The Red Dragons have faced Denison twice, both at the D3 Showcase Tournament in North Carolina; the Big Red beat Cortland 14-11 in 2024 and 9-2 in 2025. The teams were scheduled to meet again in North Carolina this season, but that game was canceled.
