OSHKOSH, Wis.- The UW-Oshkosh baseball team will begin the 2025 WIAC Tournament (presented by Culver's) against UW-La Crosse on Thursday (May 8) at 3 p.m. The tournament will be held at UW-Whitewater's Prucha Field at Jim Miller Stadium.
 
UW-Oshkosh (29-11, 20-8 WIAC), ranked No. 25 by D3baseball.com and No. 23 by the American Baseball Coaches Association, is seeded third in this year's tournament and will seek its second WIAC Tournament title; its first since winning the inaugural event in 1999. The winner of the league's postseason event earns the WIAC's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. The Titans last appeared in the national tournament in 2018, reaching the championship game of the Duluth (Minn.) Regional.
 
UW-La Crosse (33-7, 23-5 WIAC), which currently holds eighth and ninth rankings in the national polls, is the No. 2 seed in the WIAC Tournament. The Eagles were the only WIAC team to win all four games against Oshkosh this year.
 
Fourth-seeded UW-Platteville (19-19, 13-15 WIAC) will face top-seeded and host No. 2/2 UW-Whitewater on Thursday at noon. UW-Oshkosh opened its league schedule with four wins over the Pioneers on May 27-28 and handed the Warhawks their first loss of the season on April 10 by a score of 6-3.
 
The four-team, double elimination WIAC Tournament will continue on Friday (May 9) with three games and will conclude with the championship game on Saturday (May 10). One game will be played on Saturday under any circumstances, but a second will need to be play if the winner of Game 4 loses the first championship game.
 
Besides UW-Oshkosh, two of the four teams vying for the 2025 title have previously won WIAC Tournament championships. UW-Whitewater has won eight titles, most recently in 2024, and UW-La Crosse owns four crowns, most recently in 2023.
 
In conference play this season, the Titans swept UW-Platteville, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point, and UW-Stout while earning an additional 3-1 series win over UW-River Falls.
 
Across the 20-game conference campaign, the Titans struck out the fewest times (138), stole the most bases (74), and collected the most shutouts from the mound (four). They hold additional top-two rankings in doubles (59), triples (10), fielding percentage (.969), home runs allowed (26), and stolen base percentage against (.657).
 
Seven Titans enter postseason competition hitting at least .300 against WIAC opponents, led by Zach Taylor (Long Grove, Ill./Stevenson) with a .409 batting average and an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.114. He leads the WIAC with 14 doubles and has walked a team-best 24 times.
 
Nick Shiu (Gurnee, Ill./Warren Township), UW-Oshkosh's leader in RBIs (40) is hitting .360, followed by Owen Housinger (Hawthorn Woods, Ill./Stevenson) at .342 with a team-low 14 strikeouts, Mason Kirchberg (DeForest/DeForest) leads Oshkosh with seven home runs on a .324 batting average. Logan Schill (Pewaukee/Pewaukee) is hitting .324 and Carter Stebane (Brillion/Brillion) is hitting .314, both have scored a team-best 41 runs. Schill owns three triples and Stebane has stolen 27 bases on 28 attempts. Jake Surane (Lincolnshire, Ill./Stevenson), the all-time UW-Oshkosh leader in hits, doubles, at-bats, and stolen bases is hitting .322.
 
The Titans' all-time leader in innings pitched, Connor Brinkman (New London/New London), is pacing UW-Oshkosh with a 2.45 earned run average and a 0.95 WHIP across 10 appearances and nine starts. He owns a 5-2 record with a save. Across a WIAC-best 66.0 innings of work this season, Brinkman holds opponents to a .180 batting average, the lowest in the league, and has struck out 53 batters. He is one of three pitchers in the conference to record a shutout; the other two are Oshkosh's Brett Gaynor (Long Grove, Ill./Stevenson) and Josh Jansen (DeForest/DeForest). Gaynor owns three complete games, the most in the WIAC and Jansen has struck out 20 batters looking, also a league best.