Baseball opens HBCUAC Championship Run against Rust College
The Wiley University baseball team opens its quest for the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Athletic Conference 2025 Hope Credit Union Baseball Championship against No. 7 seed Rust College, scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at CHI St. Vincent Field at Dickey Stephens Park.
The championship runs until Sunday. All the games will be broadcast on the Urban Edge Network which can be viewed online. Live statistics will be available for all games.
The Wildcats (32-15, 24-6) secured the second seed after winning eight of nine series and sweeping six. They achieved their highest win total since before 2007. Ivan Del Villar finished the season ranked second in home runs with 10 and third in RBI with 49. Ryan Ready hit .344 with 40 RBI. Eight of Wiley's starters are batting over .300. Ivan Del Villar, Smauri Abram and Jacob Perez earned HBCUAC Player of the Week. In 47 games, the Wildcats hit 46 home runs, tied for the second-best since 2007, only trailing the 2011 squad that hit 47.
Keyon Guillory went 9-3 with a conference-leading 2.52 earned-run average and is tied with his teammate Jalen Porter for the HBCUAC lead in strikeouts at 97. He won four HBCUAC Pitcher of the Week Awards. Porter is 7-4 and 6-2 in HBCUAC games. He is a three-time HBCUAC Pitcher of the Week. Nick Rodriguez made the transition from the bullpen to the rotation. He went 7-2 and struck out 59 batters in 69 innings. Isaac Burciaga went 6-3 with 53 strikeouts.
Rust (22-26, 13-17 HBCUAC) won five conference series. Kyrent Cole hit .415 and recorded 50 RBI, which ranks second in the HBCUAC. Jalik Demar hit .386 with 26 RBI. Malik Berrien hit .371 and ranks second in the HBCUAC with 37 stolen bases. Shamaar Stapleton leads the team with eight home runs and recorded 44 RBI.
Leading the Bearcats on the mound is Frederick Dean, who is 5-5 with 22 strikeouts. Marques Smith has 48 strikeouts in 42 innings. Jalen Ward is 4-4 with 36 strikeouts in 57 1 /3 innings.
The Wildcats swept the Bearcats in the regular season, outscoring them 36-15. The teams have met in the postseason three times in the last two seasons. Rust claimed victories in the 2023 Black College World Series and the 2024 Gulf Coast Athletic Conference Semifinals. The Wildcats won the loser's bracket final.
For more coverage on the Wildcats visit https://wileyathletics.com/sports/bsb/index
About Wiley University Athletics
Wiley University sponsors 12 varsity sports: women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's indoor track and field, men's and women's outdoor track and field and baseball. It competes in the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Athletic Conference (HBCUAC) and the Continental Athletic Conference for men's and women's soccer.
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