When they boarded the bus Thursday for Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis, Chattanooga State’s baseball Tigers had an unbeaten pitcher, one of the nation’s RBI leaders and a No. 2 national ranking.
It has been that kind of follow-up for coach Greg Dennis’ team, which got to the NJCAA Division I tournament last year for the first time.
“You have to hope you find a pretty penny every now and then,” Dennis said, “but we think we work pretty hard and our kids do things the right way.”
The Tigers’ Dylan Coleman is hitting .470 with 47 runs batted in, which is third-best among NJCAA hitters, and pitcher Patrick Merkling, a former Auburn signee, is 7-0 with 57 strikeouts and a 1.93 earned run average in 47 2/3 innings. Max Aeschlimann is 4-0 and Seth McClure is 5-1 in the team’s 30-4 start.
The team batting average is a gaudy .361, and the staff ERA is a very respectable 2.66.