Baseball at UConn Following a 5-4 setback to Xavier earlier in the day, UConn baseball won the 2021 Big East Tournament championship with a 10-6 victory in the rematch at Prasco Park in Mason, Ohio. The Huskies claimed their first tournament title since 2015 by sweeping Louisville in three games. UConn's Bryce Payne was named MVP.
The winner of the UConn baseball game will advance to the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies have made the postseason each year of Dan Hubbs' tenure as head coach and are 67-26 overall under him. He is 47-20 in Big East play.
UConn played its first season of baseball in 1971. The Huskies are 54-3 when they win the conference title.
The Big East began sponsoring a basketball tournament in 1991-92, four years after UConn joined the conference. The Huskies were undefeated when entering the event in 2011-12 before losing in the semifinals to St. John's.
UConn has never finished below third place in the conference.
In 2020, Andy Mangnall took over as head coach of the baseball team after previous coach Dave O'Brien was fired. O'Brien had been hired away from UConn in 2017 after leading the Huskies to their first national championship in 2001.
Connecticut wins the 2011 BIG EAST Championship, defeating Louisville 69-66. It is the Huskies' second straight title and third overall.
Louisville finishes with a 29-5 record and loses in the Elite Eight to Michigan State. This is also the last season for the Cardinals as they move to the Southeastern Conference the next year.
The conference is divided into four divisions -- Atlantic, Coastal, Midwest, and New York City -- which are then split up between the schools. The division winners receive first-round byes in the NCAA Tournament. If there is a tie among division leaders, the school that won the head-to-head competition receives the top seed.
Each school is allowed only one player per division I classification, which means that if any other player from that team signs with an outside program, he would be forced to sit out for one year.
After the collapse of the original Big East following the 2009-10 season, many teams were looking for a new home. USF, which had been kicked off campus by students protesting the firing of coach Skip Bertman, found a new home in the BIG EAST where it will play its games during this upcoming season.
The NCAA tournament concluded Saturday with the Men's Ice Hockey National Title Game on ESPN, with Massachusetts beating St. Cloud State 5-0 to win the program's first men's ice hockey national championship.
The UMass Minutemen will represent the East Region in the Frozen Four in San Jose. The South Regional winner is scheduled to meet the West Regional champion at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
The University of Maine Black Bears were this year's South Regional champion. They will face off against the winner of the Midwest Regional (Wisconsin) vs. North Central Region (Minnesota) game at Levi's Stadium on April 15th at 4:00 pm EST.
Maine defeated Northern Michigan 4-1 in the semifinals before defeating Ohio State 3-0 in the final. The Black Bears were ranked No. 1 during most of the season and were undefeated in their last 10 games before losing to Ohio State in the final. This is the second time that Maine has won the national title after also doing so in 2001.
This is the third time that Massachusetts has won the national title. The Minutemen have never lost a national title game they have played in. Massachusetts won its opening game 8-0 over Yale before falling to Minnesota 7-4 in the quarterfinals.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Originally published on April 10, 2021 * Last modified on April 10, 2021 at 9:55 p.m. On Saturday, the University of Massachusetts won the men's national collegiate hockey championship, defeating St. Cloud State 5-0. This is the first title for UMass since 1990 and only the second in program history.
An NCAA college hockey tournament consists of four rounds of play: the quarterfinals, the semifinals, the third-place game, and the championship game. The eight remaining teams after the first round are seeded 1 to 8 based on their rankings. Teams play within their own division throughout the remainder of the tournament. If a series goes to five games, then the team that wins three games to two would be ranked higher than the team that wins two games to one. A tiebreaker rule is used if both teams have an equal number of victories following five games; each team will receive half of its total points from the previous round. For example, if a team wins 3 games to 2, it would earn 16 points (8 x 2). If they lost the last game 7 to 4, it would earn 12 points (6 x 2). The team with more points is declared the winner of the tournament.
In 2020, the Frozen Four was held at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. The site of the 2021 event has not been determined yet.
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