MARSHALL, Texas — It is a “second season”, UMHB head coach Mike Stawski says. The conference tournament does not know the league’s regular season home run leader, or which pitching staff boasts the top season-long ERA. The seeding of the teams is notable and based on conference regular season results, but even the No. 1 seed starts in a 0-0 game just the same.
That is where UMHB Baseball finds itself, a squad with the regular season in the rearview mirror and a weekend of immense magnitude ahead. The Cru struggled the last two weekends on the road at ETBU and Hardin-Simmons, going just 1-7 in that eight-game stretch as they dropped to the No. 3 seed in the upcoming double-elimination ASC Tournament. But inside the locker room, the belief that was fueled by early season series wins over Webster, North Central, and La Verne remains. Anything can happen once the first pitch is thrown at ETBU’s Woods Field on Thursday afternoon.
“The conference tournament doesn’t really care what has happened before this,” Stawski said. “The score at the beginning of the game doesn’t start a certain way because a team had more home runs or more wins. Everything starts 0-0.
“That’s been the message this week. This gives everyone a second season to try to play their best baseball. I know the last two weeks haven’t gone the way that we had hoped, but that’s what this weekend is for, to get ourselves back into the position that we were playing at at the beginning of the year.”
To do that, UMHB will need to start by flipping the script from last weekend in Abilene. Paired with No. 2 seed Hardin-Simmons in Thursday’s 3 p.m. opening-round game, The Cru is set to play the Cowboys for the fifth time in the last seven days. HSU took three of four on its home field, but now at a neutral site, there’s no telling how the outcome might differ. The winner advances to a matchup on Friday against the winner of ETBU and Howard Payne.
“You have to let that motivation of revenge settle in, and let them have a little bit of that,” Stawski said when asked about the impending rematch with the Cowboys, who are coached by former UMHB assistant Mitch Wilson. “Revenge is a motivating factor, and at this point in the year, you’re always looking for stuff to motivate the team and get a little bit of a leg up. But you also don’t want to overreact. So it’s finding that perfect balance.”
They spent all of last week scouting HSU and then saw the Cowboys for four games on the field, which lends itself to more recent preparation than the average team has entering a conference tournament game. Adjustments to the game plan will certainly be made, but Stawski said the focus over the last several days of practice wasn’t centered on their opponent. Rather, the Crusaders focused on themselves, and what they needed to do to dig deeper and reverse the recent trajectory.
“The thing that was good about this week so far—and still is for another day, because we practice today—is the focus has been on us,” Stawski said Wednesday. “We’ve been focusing on what we do, and what we need to be doing to be playing really well on Thursday afternoon.”
UMHB’s last ASC Tournament win came in 2022, when they beat McMurry twice on the very same field this year’s conference tournament is being played on. Since then, there have been near misses—the 10-inning loss to HSU in 2024 comes to mind—and the Crusaders have seen opportunities to advance swept away in the blink of an eye. For the seniors in particular, players like Cameron Talburt, Riley Bender, and Tyler Martin, they have experienced the emotion and drama of the conference tournament multiple times. Now comes an opportunity, in the final ASC Tournament of their collegiate careers, to step up and power UMHB into the championship game. All year, Stawski has talked about his team “being old in the lineup”, with a number of juniors and seniors filling the lineup card each game. With that comes maturity, but also a hint of urgency, understanding the need to capitalize on this moment.
As Stawski pointed out, the new four-team structure of the tournament this year allows for a more favorable path to a tournament run regardless of how Game 1 unfolds. Win back-to-back games and you’re into the title game on Saturday. In the case that you drop your first one? You would only need to win four in a row—something UMHB did against Howard Payne three weeks ago—to win the championship. The Crusaders are expecting to win, but the format does take some of the pressure off.
“It’s not too daunting,” Stawski noted. “I’ve played in six-team and eight-team tournaments where you lose the first one and you start doing the math, and it’s like, ‘We’ve got to win five or six games in a row to win this thing.’ It almost seems like an impossibility as you start looking at it. So even to the old guys, [this] doesn’t seem as daunting. This first game is critical. It’s huge. We’ve got to win it. But it’s not an eight-team tournament, and I think that’s helped ease the pressure a little bit from these older guys, who want to do really well.”
Conference tournament play never lacks firepower from the bats, often leading to higher-scoring contests. But it is the team whose bullpen holds up the best that often finds itself in the best position to make a run, being able to rely on solid arms in the late innings as they look to protect a lead or simply serve as a run-stopper while the offense aims at a late rally. UMHB’s young bullpen arms had several moments of struggle in the last two series at ETBU and HSU, but Stawski hopes those are experiences that can be learned from as The Cru now shifts its focus to playoff baseball.
“It’s immeasurable how big it’s been for some of these freshmen to get big innings and pitch against the teams they have this year,” Stawski said. “It’s critical, with the success we’ve had and even in some of the failures. Being able to learn from that is great, because sometimes you have such a great year and don’t really have adversity, then you face adversity in the conference tournament and don’t know how to handle it. Being able to have an experience in both worlds is going to be critical for our young guys.
“Like we’ve said before, I think the combination of being old in the lineup and young on the mound is going to be to our advantage this weekend.”
Team-by-Team Breakdown
No. 1 seed — ETBU Tigers (30-10, 12-0 ASC): ETBU finished the regular season on a tear, with 14 consecutive wins, including three straight conference sweeps over Hardin-Simmons, UMHB, and Howard Payne. The defending league champs enter this week’s tournament as the convincing favorites, and are the first team in league history going back to 2008 (ASC standings archives are only available back to 2008) to enter the ASC Tournament with an unblemished mark in league play.
Connor Massimini is the centerpiece of a hard-hitting ETBU lineup, as the senior enters the postseason hitting .372 with a team-high 13 homers and 49 RBIs. The Fort Worth native is one of several upperclassmen leading the way at the plate, and particularly in ASC play, has been consistent. ETBU’s starting left fielder has a nine-game hitting streak going, and scored 18 runs through the Tigers’ 12 conference games. Carson Livesay is another senior that warrants attention when he steps into the batter’s box, as the Lafayette, Louisiana product is hitting .390 with 19 extra-base hits—including a team-high three triples—and is coming off a weekend against Howard Payne in which he went 9-for-14 at the plate.
On the mound, Southern Arkansas transfer Isaac Thornton is the Tigers’ ace in the starting rotation, boasting a solid 74-to-14 strikeout-to-walk ratio, a 3.68 ERA, and a 1.02 WHIP. The senior right-hander averaged 9.3 strikeouts per game in his three conference starts, and four of his last five starts have spanned at least 7.0 innings. In tournament play, getting long outings from your starters and saving bullpen arms is incredibly valuable. When ETBU does go to the bullpen, look for junior Aiden Leonard. The junior is 6-0 with 12 relief appearances this spring, and has struck out 41 in 33.1 innings. He is also one of two relievers on the roster with two saves this season.
ASC Tournament Opener — vs. Howard Payne, April 30, 7 p.m. CT
No. 2 seed — Hardin-Simmons Cowboys (24-14, 7-5 ASC): Under the direction of former UMHB hitting coach Mitch Wilson, HSU heads to Marshall as winners of eight of their last nine, with plenty of momentum on the heels of consecutive series wins over Howard Payne and UMHB. The Cowboys have already won 24 games for the first time since 2016, and boast the highest team batting average (.347) of the ASC’s four teams.
That consistent offense—which has relied more on stringing together singles and doubles rather than sending pitches over the outfield wall—is led by the duo of Catcher Ridings and Gavin Bruning. Ridings ranks No. 2 in the ASC in batting average (.424), and Bruning is No. 3 in that same category (.418), while both also have on-base percentages above .510. Ridings has a knack for driving the ball into the gap, with a league-high 15 doubles, and Bruning has shown an ability to produce with runners in scoring position, as the sophomore has 20 RBIs in 91 at-bats this spring.
The Cowboys have been less secure on the mound, with the second-highest ERA in the league (6.63) and the second-highest opponent batting average (.292). That said, HSU’s pitching seemingly took a step forward in the last two weeks, as the Cowboys allowed four earned runs or fewer in five of their last nine to close the regular season. HSU’s most consistent starter is senior right-hander Caleb Reynolds, whose 2.75 ERA through 12 starts is the best amongst the team’s regular starters. He has struck out 74 in 68.2 innings, and went 7.0 innings with one earned run on five hits in HSU’s 9-1 win over UMHB last Friday. Freshman Garrett Keller tends to be the Cowboys’ top option out of the bullpen, with 20 appearances in his first season at the collegiate level. He pitched twice last weekend against UMHB and has allowed just three runs over his last 13 innings, demonstrating good control of the zone and a reliability that will be vital for HSU in postseason play.
ASC Tournament Opener — vs. UMHB, April 30, 3 p.m. CT
No. 3 seed — UMHB Crusaders (24-16, 5-7 ASC): UMHB was on fire through February and March, picking up notable non-conference series wins over Webster, North Central, and La Verne as The Cru reached the Top 40 in NPI. But late-season struggles in conference play challenged UMHB, who dropped its final two series of the regular season on the road at ETBU and Hardin-Simmons after sweeping Howard Payne in Belton. The Cru will look to flip the script in Marshall this week, seeking their first conference tournament win since 2022.
When UMHB’s offense is at its best, Nolan Williams usually has a hand in it. The sophomore from nearby Salado played in 10 games as a freshman, and has taken a huge step forward this spring, starting 39 games with a team-leading 14 homers and 44 RBIs while hitting .395 with a .783 slugging percentage. Williams went 3-for-4 in the series finale at HSU and recorded at least one hit in 10 of UMHB’s 12 league games. Cameron Talburt, Riley Bender, and Taylor McDaniel have added to that presence at the plate, as UMHB possesses a deep and experienced lineup that has the second-most home runs (58) in the ASC.
On the mound, Alex Hill is the name to know, a sophomore from Dallas who has the third-most strikeouts in a single season in program history (79). After pitching just 14.2 innings in 2025, he made 11 starts spanning 64.0 innings in this year’s regular season, and getting a strong outing from him will be vital for UMHB in tournament play, both to maximize Hill’s impact and keep the bullpen fresh. Mason Semmelmann could be a factor when UMHB does make a call to the bullpen, as the junior comes off a weekend at Hardin-Simmons in which he threw 3.1 scoreless innings over the span of two outings, allowing just three hits and walking none.
ASC Tournament Opener — vs. Hardin-Simmons, April 30, 3 p.m. CT
No. 4 seed — Howard Payne Yellow Jackets (13-25, 0-12 ASC): It was a tough run in conference play for HPU, who went .500 in non-league play but were winless against their ASC foes in the regular season. Don’t let the record fool you, though. Three of HPU’s four losses to HSU came by four runs or fewer, including a game where they led 8-6 through five innings but gave up six unanswered in the sixth. The Yellow Jackets lack depth, but are capable of pulling off an upset in Marshall if the bats get hot.
Landon Prestage is one of those bats who will need to be productive if HPU is going to find its way to a win in postseason play. The senior first baseman has 34 RBIs and a team-best 12 homers with a .609 slugging percentage. He is one home run away from tying HPU’s single-season record, which was set in 1993. Seth Bowman is also a strong contributor for HPU’s offense, and leads the Yellow Jackets in RBIs, with 36.
Pitching has largely been HPU’s weak spot. Neither Daylan Bower nor Bryant Wilson—who have each started at least nine games—appeared in last weekend’s series against ETBU, so it is a bit of a question mark as to who the Yellow Jackets throw against ETBU in their first game of the tournament. If Bower and Wilson remain out of the starting rotation, Luke Watkins may be in line to take the ball in the opener. Watkins struggled early against ETBU last Thursday but has started 10 games in his second season in an HPU uniform, recording a 7.33 ERA and having allowed just 13 extra-base hits.
ASC Tournament Opener — vs. East Texas Baptist, April 30, 7 p.m. CT
>> 2026 ASC Tournament Bracket (link)
>> Watch every game of the ASC Tournament live on goetbutigers.com (link)
