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D-III Baseball Program Jokingly Angles for Big Ten Invite After Upset of Washington

Pacific Lutheran scored a win to remember Tuesday.

Patrick Andres

Division III Pacific Lutheran downed Washington, a Big Ten team, 3–1 Wednesday.
Division III Pacific Lutheran downed Washington, a Big Ten team, 3–1 Wednesday. / Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

In the Tacoma suburb of Parkland, Wash. lies Pacific Lutheran University, a small university founded by Norwegian immigrants the late 19th century—and at that university rests what may be the happiest Division III college baseball team on Earth.

On Tuesday, in between series against George Fox and Pacific (not that one), the Lutes made their way to Seattle to play big, bad, Division I Washington. The Lutes won, 3–1.

The Northwest Conference members were so thrilled with their victory they immediately began to angle on social media for a conference upgrade.

"Hey [Big Ten], our DM’s are open," Pacific Lutheran wrote, tagging the conference in the post.

Starring for the Lutes were right fielder Rochne Beecham, whose two-run double put Pacific Lutheran on the board, and left fielder Ethan Keintz, whose fourth-inning solo home run closed the scoring for both teams.

Not bad for a .500 squad with seven MLB draft picks to its name in the entire history of its program.

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Patrick Andres
PATRICK ANDRES

Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .

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