Iowa Western, LSU-Eunice Ride Similar Resumes to 1-2 Ranking

No. 1-ranked Iowa Western overcame an opening-round loss to capture the 2012 Junior College World Series championship, its second national title in three years.

In a somewhat remarkable case of déjà vu, the identical scenario applied to LSU-Eunice. Same day, even.

While Iowa Western upheld its National Junior College Athletic Association Division I pre-tournament No. 1 ranking by coming through the loser’s bracket to win the D-I World Series last Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., LSU-Eunice, the top-ranked team in NJCAA Division II, exacted the same story line in the D-II World Series, played just down the road in Enid, Okla.

To take the coincidence a step further, LSU-Eunice finished the 2012 season with a stunning 57-5 record, exactly the same record that Iowa Western boasted when it began play in the national tournament. With five wins in six games, the Reivers finished at 62-6.

Appropriately, the two teams rank 1-2 in Perfect Game’s final 2012 ranking of the nation’s Top 50 junior-college teams. Iowa Western was ranked No. 1 by PG entering the D-I World Series and preserved that mark, while LSU-Eunice was ranked No. 6 entering the D-II series, and leapfrogged four teams that participated in the Division I World Series (and went a collective 4-8), to finish at No. 2.

Iowa Western was forced to overcome a 5-2 loss to San Jacinto (Texas) in the opening-round of the 10-team, double-elimination D-I tournament, and did so by coming all the way back through the loser’s bracket to reach the final, where it gained a measure of revenge on San Jac, beating that team 6-5 by scoring two runs in the top of the ninth, the winning run scoring on a bases-loaded balk.

Interesting, Iowa Western also beat San Jacinto, a six-time former national champion, in the 2010 championship game.

“This group really liked to win,” Iowa Western coach Marc Rardin said. “The group that won in 2010 enjoyed it, but is was more business-like. This group probably had a little more emotion to them and for each other. That’s what they were about. They were about wins and winning together.”

LSU-Eunice, meanwhile, lost its opening-round game at the D-II World Series, 4-3 to Des Moines Area CC, and also battled back through the loser’s bracket to advance to the championship game, where it beat defending national champion Western Oklahoma State 7-3 in the clincher.

Whereas Iowa Western had no players drafted off its 2010 national-championship team, this year’s version, which hit a school-record .403 on the season, had three players taken: third baseman Damek Tomscha (Cubs, 19th round), shortstop Iseha Conklin (Red Sox, 19th round) and first baseman/righthander Keaton Steele (Rays, 29th round).

Steele earned MVP honors at the D-I World Series by hitting a team-high .444 and saving two games. He was particularly instrumental in the deciding contest as he drove in three of Iowa Western’s first four runs on a two-run homer and sacrifice fly, keyed his team’s two-run, ninth-inning rally with a leadoff walk and came around to score the tying run, and then preserved the win by pitching a scoreless inning in the bottom of the ninth.

Surprisingly, Tanner Kreietemeier, who had been Iowa Western’s dominant two-way player most of the 2012 season, going 12-1, 1.78 while hitting .411-9-62, was passed over in the draft. He suffered his first setback of the season in the Reivers opening-round loss in Grand Junction.

LSU-Eunice, which also won national championships in 2006 and 2008 to give it four in seven years, did not have a single player drafted this week.

Predictably, California’s Orange Coast College, which occupied the No. 1 spot in Perfect Game’s ranking of the Top 50 junior-college teams most of the spring, and Texas juco power Howard College, which began the season ranked No. 1, dominated the junior-college ranks in this year’s draft. Orange Coast had six players taken, Howard had five.

Neither school, however, finished on a winning note as Orange Coast (36-7) lost in the California Final Four state championship, while Howard (45-12) lost in the NJCAA Region 5 championship game, one game short of a trip to the Junior College World Series. Orange Coast, which dropped from No. 1 to No. 7 after its disappointing finish, rebounded to No. 3 in PG’s final ranking behind Iowa Western and LSU-Eunice, while Howard finished at No. 9.

5-21 - Ranking as of May 21