COD Baseball will travel to #4 Santa Ana Friday in SoCal Regionals

COD Baseball has claimed the #21 seed and will travel in the opening round of the SoCal Regional playoffs after finishing 4th in Conference.

You can find the complete CCCAA SoCal Regionals bracket HERE

State Playoffs Ticket Prices are as follows: General Admission is $12. Faculty, Staff, Children Under 12, Adults 60+ & Students w/ Valid A.S. card are $8. There are no guest passes allowed.

The best-of-3 series will take place on the campus of Santa Ana College at Don Sneddon Field. Friday first pitch of game 1 will be at 2 p.m., Saturday first pitch of game 2 will be at 11 a.m. where the game will be played at Santa Ana College, but the Roadrunners will be the "home" team and if necessary, game 3 will be on Saturday at 2 p.m. The series will also coincide with a major regional cool down, as inland Orange County temperatures expected to be 65 on Friday and 67 on Saturday.

You may purchase your tickets at the gate and only cash will be accepted.

Under the tutelage of third-year head coach Sam DiMatteo, the #21 seeded Roadrunners Baseball team ended the 2023 season claiming their second consecutive playoff berth.

DiMatteo helped guide the Roadrunners to a strong finish to the regular season, with a 25-14 overall record and an 13-11 conference record, wrapping up the regular season winning 10 of their final 13 games. They were rewarded with the 21 seed in the Southern California Regional Playoffs along with a Conference Gold Glove selection (Antonio Crews), 4 First Team selections (Jacob Mejia, Graham Gonzales, Kenny Keller & Kenneth Schechter) and 5 Second Team selections (Jason Leon, Antonio Crews, Joeseph Jimenez, Michael-Alan Stanford & Braden Turner).

Desert will face off with a Santa Ana Dons team that finished the regular season with a record of 26-14, the Dons ended the 2023 season in 3rd place in the Orange Empire Conference (OEC) ending the season with an OEC record of 13-8. The Dons started the season 6-4 and have won 13 of their last 17 games.

Santa Ana finished the 2022 season in 3rd place in the OEC with a record of 13-8, with an overall record of 32-12-1. The Dons were most recently in the playoffs in the 2022 season entering the Southern California Regional's as the 4th seed, Santa Ana swept the #13 seeded Santa Barbara City Vaqueros, 2 games to 0 (5-4, 19-4) then fell in the Super Regional to the #5 seeded Palomar Comets of San Marcos, 2 games to 1 (9-13, 17-9, 17-9). The Dons are coached by Tom Nilles in his 7th season.

Desert and Santa Ana last played one another in a home-at-home series on February 4 and 6, 2020. A game was played in Palm Desert on the 4th, the Dones swept the 2-game series (11-8 & 9-5).

The winner of Friday and Saturday's best-of-three game first-round contest will advance to face the Super Regionals on May 11-13. The CCCAA Baseball State Championship will take place on May 27-29 at Folsom Lake College in Folsom.

Follow COD Athletics on Twitter @COD_Athletics Instagram @COD_Athletics or Facebook @College of the Desert Athletics

For additional information, please contact the COD Sports Information Office at 760.423.6641.

Information & Story provided by COD Sports Information. Photo by Darbie Catalfamo.