OMAHA, Neb. -- The No. 5 Bellevue University baseball team won a winner-take-all regular-season finale 12-1 over Dakota State University to claim the 2023 North Star Athletic Association regular-season championship after taking the first game by a score of 5-2 on Saturday afternoon at Brown Park.
Bellevue improved their overall record to 41-8 and finished NSAA play at 25-3. Dakota State fell to 34-16 overall and concluded the league slate at 24-4.
Game One: BU 5, DSU 2
Nick Grade racked up four hits, including a big two-run double to provide insurance in the sixth while Alexandro Celiceo and Kenji Miller combined on a strong pitching performance in a 5-2 Bruin win.
Bellevue scored first on a squeeze play by Logan Grant in the first inning and never trailed.
The Bruins threatened for more but a double play ended the inning and the score remained 1-0 until Anthony Lind brought in another on a fifth-inning squeeze.
An inning later Drew Staley singled home CJ Townsend for a 3-0 advantage and Grade came through with a back-breaking two-out, two-run double to put the Bruins in the driver's seat.
Dakota State finally got to Celiceo in the seventh, scoring both runs after he departed on a Ryan McDaniel single and Jeremy Green groundout.
After Miller allowed the first two batters he faced out of the bullpen to reach, he settled in and retired the final eight batters he faced to preserve the win.
Nicholai Arbach (4-3) suffered the loss despite allowing just one run in four innings of work.
Celiceo (8-1) picked up the win, limiting the Trojans to just two runs on five hits over 6.1. He struck out five and snapped a streak of nine-straight starts of allowing a long ball.
Game Two: BU 12, DSU 1
Easton Brinton (6-1) turned in his best start of the season with the top-seed in next week's NSAA Tournament on the line. The junior right-hander tossed his first complete game of the year, scattering four hits and striking out four.
Chase Wenninger's solo home run in the fifth accounted for Dakota State's lone run of the game.
Grant Svikulis (6-2) came into the weekend's series as the front-runner for the NSAA Pitcher of the Year but Bellevue torched him for nine runs on seven hits in just 4.2 innings of work.
Logan Grant opened the scoring with an opposite field double in the first after Kanta Kobayashi reached on an error to begin the inning.
Bellevue struck for four more runs in the third as Nick Grade laid down a squeeze, Drew Staley scored on a wild pitch, and Anthony Lind blasted a two-run home run.
Looking for insurance in the fifth, Grant drove in a run with a ground ball to make it 6-1. Three batters later Mathieu Sirois smoked a blast over the first row of cars in center field for a three-run home run to chase Svikulis from the game.
The Bruins tacked on three more in the sixth for the 12-1 final.
Up Next:
Bellevue travels to Dickinson, N.D. as the No. 1 seed for next weekend's NSAA Tournament where they will open play against eighth-seeded Presentation College. The full bracket and game times will be announced at the conclusion of regular-season action.
Notes & Numbers:
- 40 – Bellevue reaches the 40-win plateau for the fourth-straight season, 10th time under coach Duane Monlux, and 27th time overall
- 4 – The Bruins claim their fourth-straight NSAA Regular-Season Championship
- 10 – The championship is BU's 10th NSAA Baseball title overall (regular-season and tournament)
- 20 – It marks Bellevue's 20th conference regular-season title since 1995, including 14 in the MCAC
- 36 – Bellevue has won 36 conference championships, all since 1995, accounting for MCAC and NSAA Regular-Season and Tournament titles
