After its most successful season in years, the Allan Hancock College baseball team was rewarded with a postseason berth for the first time since 2004.
“This is what we’ve been working towards all season, and our players have earned this,” said Hancock head coach Chris Stevens.
The Bulldogs enter the regional playoffs as Southern California’s 13th seed and will go on the road to face fourth-seed Cypress College in the best-of-three first round series. Game One will be played at Cypress on May 8 at 2 p.m., and Game Two is scheduled for May 9 at 11 a.m.
The team finished the regular season second in the Western States North conference standings behind Cuesta College, tallying a conference record of 15-10 and a winning overall record of 22-20. Cypress went 17-7 in the conference and 29-14 overall in 2009.
“Cypress is a great program with a longstanding tradition,” Stevens said in a press release. “We’re looking forward to the challenge of competing on their field in a best-two-out-of-three series.”
Hancock played Cypress twice during the regular season, losing 15-5 to the Chargers on Jan. 29 and coming back to even the season series with a 6-5 victory two days later.
The California Community College Baseball Coaches Association ranked the Bulldogs 14th in Southern California in its April 30 poll. Hancock also took ninth place in the association’s final regular season Ratings Points Index for the conference.
Freshman infielder Chris Mallory led the team in hitting over the regular campaign with a .351 batting average, and freshman Skyler Ellis was the leading run producer with 39 runs batted in. Catcher Corey Dotzler and infielder Dave Anderson tied for the team lead with four home runs apiece.
On the pitching side, left-handed sophomore Sheldon Lechuga finished the year as the team’s best hurler, notching five wins and posting a 3.64 earned run average.
This article appears in May 7-14, 2009.