WATCH: Jay Adams' walk-off RBI single allows Bulldogs to claim GPAC title
SEWARD, Neb. – The Bulldogs had just the right man at the plate at just the right time. The blowtorch hot Jay Adams ended Tuesday (May 10)’s dramatic GPAC Baseball Championship Game with a walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the 10th. For the second day in a row, the Concordia University Baseball team mobbed the heroic Adams. The edge-of-your contest saw the second-seeded Bulldogs outlast fifth-seeded Jamestown, 7-6, resulting in the celebration of a second-straight GPAC title at Plum Creek Park.
Chalk up the fifth total GPAC championship won by the program under eighth-year Head Coach Ryan Dupic. Concordia (36-15-1) also captured the 2021 conference tournament title on its home field. These moments never grow stale.
“I love to see the players celebrate. It really brings me a lot of joy,” Dupic said. “It’s really neat to see the players and the families and see how much joy they get out of all of this. That’s one of the highs for me. I’m just very proud of those guys. It’s been a very busy four-to-five days on a lot of levels, but I’m just very glad with the way the guys hung with it and found a way to get it done.”
This championship came the hard way, but that may have made it all the sweeter. Coming off a three-wins-in-one day marathon on Monday, the Bulldogs showed they still had plenty left in the tank to take on a Jimmie squad that had gone a perfect 3-0 through the Doane Bracket. It helps when you have the superhuman Adams on your side. On Tuesday, standout Jamestown reliever Hayden Brown was one pitch away from pushing the game to an 11th inning, but Adams laced an RBI single to left that chased home Carlos Benavides for the winning tally.
It's fair to proclaim Adams as the unofficial MVP of the tournament. He also delivered a walk-off RBI single versus Northwestern that advanced Concordia into the championship game. Over the six GPAC tournament games, Adams went 16-for-30 (.533) with 12 runs, four home runs, a double and 14 RBIs. The Waverly High School product went 3-for-5 with two runs and two RBIs in the championship game.
Said Adams, “We get to keep playing. That’s beauty of it. We get to keep playing for our seniors. I’m at a loss of words right now for how I feel. It’s crazy.”
In the back-and-forth battle, the Bulldogs mounted a lead three separate times – only for Jamestown to come right back and tie things up each time. After Concordia led 6-3, the Jimmies pulled even in the seventh thanks to a Kendall Yackley RBI single and Tanner Shepard two-run double. A Bulldog error also aided in the rally.
Both bullpens tightened up from there. While Adams deserves plenty of attention for his role in the postseason run, the work of Jacob Lycan on Tuesday was critical. He fired the final 3.1 innings for the Bulldogs and recorded six strikeouts while allowing just one hit and two walks. Lycan struck out the side in the ninth and then stranded runners at first and second in the 10th. Concordia failed to come through with runners on base in the bottom of the ninth, but that just made things even more dramatic.
This was the stuff of Bulldog Baseball lore. There was a built-in-excuse had Concordia lost. It could have succumbed to the fatigue of playing more than 30 innings in two days – or fading pitching depth – but this squad showed the type of grit it possesses.
“The best compliment I can give them is I did nothing,” Dupic said of how the Bulldogs bounced back from losing their first game of the tournament. “I went home, took a break and came back. They did it. A lot of people would probably give me some credit for this, but it’s not me. They took responsibility and ownership for it. They found a way to get it done. I stayed out of the way. I’m just very proud of them for the way they did it.”
Added Adams, “We were all about grit this week. We said that if we’re going to win these three games (on Monday), we might as well go and win it all. That’s how much grit we had.”
In the title game, Joey Grabanski also enjoyed a fine day at the plate as he went 2-for-5 with a double and three RBIs. Jesse Garcia and Ty Nekoliczak also notched two hits apiece. One of Nekoliczak’s base hits preceded Adams’ walk-off single in the 10th.
Alex Johnson got the start on the mound for the Bulldogs and threw 5.2 innings. He allowed three runs on seven hits in a strong performance on short rest. Nathan Buckallew and Daniel Rivera also appeared out of the bullpen. Lycan was credited with the win. On the other side, Trei Hough started for the Jimmies and went 4.2 innings.
The NAIA’s national championship selection show is scheduled to air at 4 p.m. CT on Thursday (May 12) via the NAIA YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/PlayNAIA. Concordia will be one of 46 teams assigned to one of the 10 NAIA National Championship Opening Round sites. This marks the fourth time that Dupic has led the Bulldogs to the national tournament.