BOONEVILLE, Miss. - For the second consecutive season, The Plex will host postseason baseball as Northeast Mississippi Community College welcomes Jones College for a best-of-three, opening round series in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Region 23 baseball playoffs.
Game one will take place on Thursday, May 4 at 6 p.m. The final two contests will be Friday, May 5 and if necessary, Saturday, May 6 with game times being 3 p.m. and 2 p.m. respectively.
All games in this series will air live on the Black Channel of NEMCCTV. Tune in by visiting www.nemcctv.com or the "Northeast Mississippi Community College" app on Amazon, Apple or Roku television devices.
Northeast and Jones both finished with 18-10 records in the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference (MACCC) play. Due to tie breaker scenarios, Northeast is slotted into fifth place while Jones moves into the six seed.
The winner of this series advances to the NJCAA Region 23 Tournament in Eunice, La from May 15-19. The four first round winners will join Louisiana State University (LSU) Eunice and East Central Community College.
Northeast finished the regular season by winning 10 of their last 14 games. The Tigers got sweeps over Northwest Mississippi Community College, Holmes Community College and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
That stretched also included splits with at the time seventh ranked Jones and fifth ranked Meridian Community College.
Reigning NJCAA Division II Defensive Player of the Year, Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner and Mississippi State University commit Jackson Owen leads team with 11 home runs and 53 RBIs. Owen is one of three Tigers in program history with back-to-back double digit home run seasons joining Ricky Lambert (1999-2000) and Tucker Childers (2017-18).
Southern (La.) University commit Khi Holiday gets things started at the top of the batting order with a Northeast baseball program record 72 runs scored and team high 63 hits and 24 stolen bases.
Kelly Crumpton has been solid in the middle of the lineup with a team high 12 doubles and ties for the team lead with five triples. Kristian Sprawling leads the team with a .549 on base percentage. Noah Foster leads the team with a .373 batting average.
Four Tigers have 50-plus hits this season with Southern Illinois commit Jackson McCoy being two hits away from joining that list. Also, four Tigers have 40-plus runs batted in.
Davis Oswalt and Matthew Bullard have led the charge on the mound for Northeast. Oswalt has a 6-2 record with 52 strikeouts while Bullard is 9-0 with 45 strikeouts and is the first nine game winner in program history.
Drew Cartee, Brodey Lentz, Taylor Ballard and John Eaton have given the Tigers solid innings out of the bullpen.
Northeast is two wins shy of tying the program record for most wins in a single season.