CBB: Westmont heads to Georgia for NAIA opening round

Westmont (38-17) has been assigned to the Lawrenceville Bracket for the NAIA Baseball National Tournament Opening Round. The tournament is hosted by the Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies (48-10) who are the tournament’s top seed and ranked sixth in the final NAIA Coaches’ Poll.

The Warriors will first face St. Francis of Illinois (36-20) which earned an automatic qualification into nationals as the regular season winner of the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference. Westmont is the fourth seed in the five-team bracket while St. Francis is No. 5. The opening game will be played on Monday at 11:00 a.m. EDT/8:00 a.m. PDT.

The winner will take on the host Grizzlies who were the winners of the Association of Independent Institutions Tournament. That game  is also scheduled for Monday with a 6:00 p.m. EDT/3:00 p.m. PDT start.

Southeastern of Fla. (44-14), which was the tournament champions for The Sun Conference, is the No. 2 seed, and William Woods out of Missouri (39-10) is the third. The Owls were the tournament champions of the American Midwest Conference.

The loser of the Westmont-St. Francis game will take on the loser of the Southeastern-William Woods game on Tuesday morning at 11:00 a.m. EDT/8:00 a.m. PDT in the tournament’s first elimination game.

The winner of the tournament will advance to the 2014 Avista-NAIA Baseball World Series May 23-30