A lot of former Tennessee high schoolers will be participating for various Appalachian Athletic Conference teams in the tournament starting tomorrow.

Tournament bracket

#1 Tennessee Wesleyan vs. #8 Bluefield
#2 Union (Ky) vs. #7 Bryan
#3 Brevard vs. #6 Milligan
#4 Montreat vs. #5 UVA-Wise

TWC and Union were the cream of the crop this year. The conference adopted a new tournament format this year and the #9 and 10 teams (King and Virginia Intermont) did not qualify for the tournament.

Milligan and King took the biggest falls from last year. Union has been ranked in the NAIA top 10 for much of the season.

Several schools had new coaches this year, with mixed results: TWC, Brevard, Milligan, Bryan, Bluefield, King.

I was much closer to the Milligan situation. While the team ranked near the top in conference pitching, they were at or near the bottom in hitting and defense. Milligan played much better defensively toward the end of the season, but it was too little too late. Milligan was shut out 5 times (no-hit once, one or two hits a couple of times), scored 3 runs or less 15 other times (all but one of those games was a loss). When you consider that a decent college ERA is 3.00, it's easy to see why Milligan struggled to win games this year.