SIAC baseball tournament gets underway today in Ozark

OZARK, Alabama - Stillman College enters the eight-team Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball tournament as No. 1 seed in the West after finishing with a 21-0 record in the SIAC, 24-16 overall.

The tournament will be played in Ozark, Alabama at historic Eagle Stadium. The Tigers will face Benedict College, the No. 4 seed in the East, in the first round today at 3 p.m.

Claflin is the No. 1 seed in the East. The Panthers play Tuskegee, the No. 4 seed in the West, today at 9 a.m.

Other first-round games today include Miles vs. Albany State at noon and Paine vs. Kentucky State at 6 p.m.

It’s understandable the setting of Eagle Stadium in Ozark would feel like home for Stillman College coach Donny Crawford.

Crawford grew up in Rehobeth, where he was a standout athlete for the Rebels in the early 1970s. He later played two years of baseball at Wallace College in Dothan before finishing his athletic career at Southern Mississippi.

Among his early coaching stops was a two-year stint at Cottonwood as the head baseball coach, and he also coached three years at L.B. Wallace junior college in Andalusia.

While Crawford has called Tuscaloosa home for a number of years now, the close ties with the Wiregrass helped Crawford believe Eagle Stadium would be the perfect setting for the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball tournament.

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