With only four divisional series per season and only four playoff spots up for grabs, the baseball and softball teams in the NESCAC East and West division have to approach each weekend with a sense of urgency.
That do-or-die mentality was heightened this weekend for both of Tufts' diamond-dwellers as NESCAC East-rival Trinity came to Huskins and Spicer fields for a weekend bout.
Both teams responded with sweeps of the Bantams, with the baseball team coming through 7-6, 8-2, 12-5 and the softball team taking the opener 5-1 and the second game 5-2. The sweeps had strong playoff implications, with the baseball team securing a spot after a rough two-week NESCAC stretch and the softball team clinching the top spot in the division for the second straight year.
With its weekend sweep of Trinity, the baseball team clinched a playoff berth and can finish no worse than second place in the NESCAC East. The wins moved the Jumbos ahead of the Bantams by three games in the loss column with three left to play and gives Tufts the advantage in the event of a tie. With the sweep, Tufts has the luxury of playing with only its playoff seeding, not its playoff life, on the line when it hosts Colby next weekend.
"That's not really going to affect us going into next week," senior tri-captain Greg Chertok said. "We have to play same every game and keep going out there. There definitely is [a tendency to let down] in a lot of teams, but our coach won't let us do that and our team is strong enough that we won't do that."
This season's East division winner gets the right to host the NESCAC Tournament. Bowdoin is currently ahead of Tufts by one game for first place, but the Polar Bears also hold the tiebreaker against the Jumbos after sweeping them on Apr. 8-9. For the Jumbos to find themselves in first place in the division, three losses to Colby this weekend is not an option. They will need to either sweep Colby and have Bowdoin win no more than one game against Bates, or win two and hope Bates sweeps Bowdoin.
"All teams want to control their destinies," Chertok said. "It's a helpless feeling knowing we're at hands of other teams."
"Well, we're 4-0 at home, so it seems like we do pretty well with the home crowd," Chertok added. "Support always helps. We really came together this weekend as an offense though."
While not a do-or-die scenario, the weekend was just as key for the softball team, which clinched the top spot in the NESCAC East with a 5-1, 5-2 sweep of the Bantams to stay perfect in the division at 6-0. The wins not only ensured the top playoff seed, but exacted some revenge on the Bantams for the only NESCAC East blemish on the Jumbos' 2005 record, a 7-1, 6-7 split with Trinity on Apr. 29 of last year.
With the top spot sewn up, the team's only remaining divisional series, a doubleheader against struggling Colby (7-17 overall, 1-5 NESCAC East), is something of a double-edged sword for the surging Jumbos. The matchup presents both a chance to finish undefeated in the division for the first time since 2002, before anyone on the current roster was in Tufts uniform, but also a trap game which, if overlooked, could send the Jumbos into the playoffs with a black mark on their record and a home-stretch loss.
"The one danger is that is we don't want to go into this weekend thinking we have the top spot and play down to Colby," senior co-captain Sarah Conroy said. "But I think [the Trinity sweep] bodes well for what we want to do in the postseason. If we can come out of the NESCAC [East] 8-0, which we've never done, we'll be that much more intimidating to other teams. And I think [the wins] are a reflection of how much we've worked, how we approach NESCAC games and pull them out."
With the Jumbos rebounding from an early 4-8 showing in California and improving all season towards their current 22-10 mark, coach Cheryl Milligan has her eye on the postseason, where she looks for her team to peak.
"It's definitely [a goal of ours] to go undefeated in NESCAC [East], so these next two games [against Colby] are big whether we need them or not for the playoffs," Milligan said. "We're an extremely goal-oriented team, and in terms of getting where we want to be and heading in the direction of where we want to be in a couple weeks, these games are important."
