The 2025 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship bracket has been set.

What started as 64 teams in the Regional round, became 16 in Super Regionals. Now, only eight teams remain as the tournament is set to begin this Friday, May 29, and go until Thursday, June 5. 

Each team will battle it out in Classic Park, in Eastlake, Ohio, to see who will become the next national champion.

This year’s teams include, in seed order:

1. Johns Hopkins (44-3)
2. Denison (40-5)
3. Wisconsin-Whitewater (44-6)
4. Endicott (43-4)
5. Kean (40-9)
6. Trinity (Texas) (41-8)
7. Rowan (36-10)
8. Messiah (36-14)

The eight teams are seeded one through eight and split up into two separate four-team brackets. The first round is double-elimination, and whichever two teams are left after those games have played out moves on to the best-of-three finals. The winner of the finals will be crowned the 2025 World Series champions.

For Rowan, it marks their first College World Series appearance since the 2021 season. It’s been 46 years since the Profs captured a national title. They won the program’s first in 1979.

How did Rowan get to the World Series?

Rowan is one of two teams in this year’s tournament who did not win their respective conference title. The other is fellow New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) opponent Kean. Despite not winning the NJAC, the Profs earned a bid to the NCAA Regionals, where they played three games at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio.

Their first matchup came against Grove City, a team that came into the Regionals after winning their respective conference title for the first time since 2008. Rowan defeated the Wolverines 9-1 on the backs of a strong performance by pitcher Mike Shannon. Shannon went eight innings and struck out nine, his second-highest strikeout total this season.

The next two wins for the Profs were offensive master classes over the Catholic Cardinals, as they won by scores of 26-9 and 20-4, respectively, to capture a berth to their first Super Regionals since 2023. In game 1, the Profs tied the program runs record with 26. Phil Sedalis also exploded for three home runs in game 2, one shy of a program record. Rowan left Regionals with a whopping 55-14 win margin over their three games as they moved on to Lynchburg, Va., for Super Regionals.

In the Super Regionals, the Profs came face-to-face with the No. 5 Lynchburg Hornets, a team that up until their meeting, made the College World Series tournament the past two years. In 2024, they fell just short of the championship round after a loss to the future champ Misericordia, and the season before that in 2023, they were crowned national champions.

Joey Bogart hit two crucial doubles in game 1 to help his team put away the Hornets, who came back from a 4-0 deficit to tie things up headed into the seventh inning. Rowan would come out with a 7-4 victory as Shannon put together another quality start in his second career Super Regionals appearance.

A win in game 2 came at the expense of two more of Rowan’s top pitchers, Zach Coluccio and Steven Maiers. Coluccio, making his first career Super Regionals start, would start strong, throwing five shutout innings before a homerun by Lynchburg’s Joe Munitz in the sixth would break the scoring. The Hornets would start the seventh inning by hitting three back-to-back singles to load the bases. Maiers would come in as relief to get out of the jam, retiring the next three batters to prevent any more runs from scoring and pitch the rest of the game. Rowan closed out game 2 with a 6-2 win over Lynchburg, securing their ticket to a College World Series for the first time in four years.

A first-game rematch with Denison

The Profs action in the College World Series will begin on Friday, May 30, with Denison. Denison is making the program’s first-ever World Series appearance in 2025. The Big Red’s historic run comes a year record-breaking 2024 season, where the program won a record 42 games.

Denison has also won 19 straight headed into their matchup with Rowan, but this isn’t the first time the two teams have faced one another on an NCAA stage.

In 2024, both met in the Regional round as Denison handed Rowan both their losses to knock them out of the tournament. And they weren’t pretty losses either. The Big Red dominated the Profs 26-7 in game 1 and shut them out 13-0 in game 2.

Following their losses in the 2024 Regionals, Head coach Mike Dickson says he was confident about one thing.

“Denison, I thought, was the best team in Division III we[Rowan] faced in my time here,” Dickson said.

This well-rounded Denison team starts with their pitching. The Big Red as a whole ranks second in all of Division III in ERA at 2.77. Their top three starters own dominant ERAs as well, including Sam Larson (1.89), Peter Lemke (1.92) and Nick Falter (2.30).

The offense has also been on a tear, winning all their NCAA games by a combined 62-12 margin. Their leadoff man, sophomore Jack Lutte, is batting .416 with a 1.174 OPS. Erik Sundgren, the team’s home run leader this season with 17, owns a .378 batting average with an OPS of 1.182. He also enters Ohio coming off a three-home run outing in game 2 of the Super Regionals. He broke his own single game home run record in game 2 as Denison went on to win 14-1.

But, it’s a new year for both programs, and Dickson is even more confident in the squad he has this year. After defeating the higher-ranked Lynchburg in the Super Regionals, he says there should never be a doubt about this year’s team.

“I think we’re better than we were last year. I think we’re a better team,” Dickson said. “They’re[Denison] very well coached, and they do a great job on the mound. I mean, no one gave us a chance against Lynchburg either. So that’s the way I look at it, is I’ll pick my guys against anybody. Let’s go compete and see how we do.”

Offensive Outbursts and Bullpen Blues

Rowan has proven themselves to have a high (prof)icency offense. The team is ranked third in Division III with a .347 batting average and averages 10.4 runs per game, which ranks fourth nationwide. Since the NCAA tournament began, the Profs have scored 68 runs, the most of any other team in the College World Series tournament over that span. The second closest is Johns Hopkins, with 63 runs scored over all their NCAA tournament games.

The Profs are also a team of experienced players. Coming into the 2025 season, Rowan had nine starters return, including Shannon and Tyler Cannon, who has played collegiate baseball for six years, including four as a Prof.

Numerous veterans have played in NCAA games before. Shannon and fellow pitcher Thomas Sullivan are the only players who were on the 2021 World Series team, but multiple top players including Cannon, Phil Sedalis, and Jason Morgan, were on the 2023 Super Regionals roster. 

Another strength for the Profs this NCAA postseason lies in their starting pitching. Shannon, a fifth-year ace, has a 2.40 ERA over his two starts in this year’s NCAA tournament. In 15 innings pitched, he has allowed only four earned runs and struck out 13 batters. 

Coluccio has also done his part, owning a 2.02 ERA in his two starts during Rowan’s NCAA play. He has 13 strikeouts in 13 ⅓ innings pitched.

Steven Maiers has also proven himself to be the team’s high-leverage pitcher, coming in relief in both of the Profs Super Regionals games with Lynchburg to seal their wins in both. 

But, a majority of the remaining Profs bullpen consists of young pitchers who are inexperienced when it comes to the postseason. They didn’t see any action during Super Regionals but saw limited use in the Regional round. Freshman Austin Kreyenhagen, who started a few regular season games while also acting as a relief pitcher, hasn’t seen action since the team’s NCAA journey began.

Pitching decisions in high-pressure situations, especially in heightened contexts like the postseason, means everything. For Dickson, his task during the College World Series will be to determine how he will manage the bullpen.

“Maiers is going to be in some high-leverage situations that way we can use those other guys and space out that bullpen,” Dickson said. “We’ll figure the other games out when we get there.”

A Plethora of Storylines (And a Conference Rivalry in Eastlake)

Rowan is appearing in their first World Series in four years, but the Profs aren’t the only interesting team in this year’s bracket. All eight teams have unique storylines headed into Ohio.

The first bracket consists of No. 1 Johns Hopkins versus No. 8 Messiah and No. 4 Endicott facing No. 5 Kean.

Johns Hopkins will begin play in the World Series on a 26-game win streak. The Blue Jays finished runners-up to Lynchburg for the national title in 2023. That also marks the program’s last NCAA Championship appearance.

Messiah advanced to their first-ever World Series in their history after sweeping Salisbury in the Super Regionals. The Falcons will look to finally bring a national title to a 65-year-old program.

Endicott’s trip to Ohio marks three consecutive trips to the World Series for the program since 2022. But, the Gulls have been unable to make it to the finals the past two tournaments. In 2025, the team will look to make it out of the first round.

Kean will participate in their third College World Series all-time and their first since 2013. The Cougar’s first appearance came in 2007 when they were crowned national champions. Kean joins Rowan in Ohio as a fellow member of the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC). The two NJAC teams in the College World Series mark the first occurrence since 1985, when both Montclair State and William Paterson made the tournament.

Rowan went 14-4 in conference play, while Kean won the regular season NJAC title after going a near perfect 17-1. Neither team would go on to win the conference championship, which was captured by Rutgers-Camden. When it comes to the teams in the NJAC, Dickson says it’s one of the most competitive conferences in all of Division III.

“Looking at it, other than maybe Wisconsin-Whitewater, I would like to say we’ve played one of the hardest schedules in the country just working your way through the NJAC,” Dickson said.  “I think that only helps prepare you for later in the year, and it’s why we play.”

Rowan’s bracket will see the No. 7 Profs matching up with No. 2 Denison and No. 3 Wisconsin-Whitewater battling No. 6 Trinity (Texas).

Rowan makes their first World Series appearance since 2021 and looks to capture a national crown for the first time in 46 years. The program won back-to-back titles during the 1978-79 seasons. They also made two straight appearances from 2004-05. Denison will look to win its program’s first World Series in its 165-year history.

Wisconsin-Whitewater is making its second straight appearance in the NCAA Championship tournament. The Warhawks finished as national runner-up last year as they fell to the 2024 champion Misericordia Cougars in three games.

Trinity made the NCAA Championship for the first time since 2022. The 2016 national champions have made the tournament for the fourth time in program history.

In Dickson’s opinion, this is the most stacked the Division III World Series playing field has seen in recent years.

“I think it’s the deepest field it’s been in a long time. You have Hopkins, who is a tremendous offensive team. Denison, I thought, was the best team in Division III we faced in my time here. Whitewater is always physical. Endicott, so I think it’s as deep a field as there is,” Dickson said.

Dickson also says the tournament is a blank slate. It’s not about how good a team has looked on paper all season, but how they can perform under postseason pressure.

“You throw everything when you go to the World Series, you throw all that out of the window,” Dickson said. “We’re all 0-0 going into it. It’s about playing well over the next week, and the team that plays the best over the next week is a team that’s going to win. That doesn’t mean it’s a team that’s played best up until this point. It’s a matter of playing well at this moment.”

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