EASTLAKE, Ohio — As Jake Lutte ’27 watched his 10th-inning line drive carom off the right-field wall, he rounded first base and braced for impact.
Lutte saw teammate Kelly Crittenberger ’27 crossing home plate with the run that secured Denison’s first NCAA baseball championship. He also spotted a joyous wave of red-clad humanity, spilling from the dugout, ready to engulf him.
“I was honestly pretty terrified because I was at the bottom of a dog pile my freshman year and it wasn’t a lot of fun,” Lutte said, laughing. “But in this case, I was real happy to be at the bottom.
Lutte’s extra-inning rocket capped a 4-3 comeback win over Endicott College in the third and deciding game of the Division III College World Series at Classic Auto Group Park on Thursday.
Devin Parker ’29 pitched 7-⅓ scoreless innings in relief as Denison rallied from a 3-0 deficit. Cade Nowik ’26 was named the tournament’s most valuable player.
The victory brought down the curtain on the greatest season in Denison baseball history and dramatically delivered the Big Red’s third NCAA title of the year, following triumphs by the men’s swimming and diving team and the women’s basketball team.
Denison is one of just three Division III programs — Tufts University and the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse are the others — to win three or more NCAA titles in the 2025-26 academic year. There are 426 Division III schools.
This is a golden era for Denison athletics, and baseball coach Mike Deegan was only too happy to share the spotlight. He believes his team, which finished the season with a 51-3 record, rode the momentum created by other Big Red champions, including the men’s tennis team from a year ago.
The coach was thrilled for his players and appreciative of the champions they have become.
“We talk a lot about the difference between a team and a program,” Deegan said. “A team just really focuses on themselves and it gets very selfish, but when you’re part of a program — you see that when we win, we link up —we like to think of that as an unbreakable bond.”
Beyond his players, Deegan thanked Denison administrators and President Adam Weinberg for instilling an emphasis on performance across campus.
“They say coaches win games, but administrations win championships, and you don’t do this without support from the administration,” said Deegan, who has methodically built a national powerhouse since arriving in 2013. “Early in my tenure here, I saw President Weinberg, and he said, ‘At Denison, you can receive one of the best educations in the country and compete on the best teams in the country.’ This administration provides resources for us to compete at the highest level.
The Big Red were the nation’s best baseball team for almost the entire season. They won an NCAA record-tying 44 consecutive games and never had a single losing streak. But this tournament run tested their character from the first pitch in regionals to the last out of the World Series.
The Big Red were forced to play two games Thursday after Endicott rallied from 6-2 and 8-6 deficits to outlast them 11-10 in 10 innings.
Deegan’s players rebounded as they have so many times in the postseason.
Denison became the first Division III team in 26 years to drop its first game at the World Series site — the Big Red fell to East Texas Baptist University, 5-1, on May 29— and still win the national title. Montclair State University was the last to do it in 2000.
“We have a thing where we say, ‘You play for the guy next to you,’” said Max Fishbein ’27, whose fifth-inning home run ignited the Game 3 rally. “So when you’re playing for the guy next to you and you put your trust in him — like Coach Deegan says — we have this unbreakable bond, and we’re never down in the dugout.
Hundreds of Denison fans flocked to suburban Cleveland in hopes of seeing the baseball team lift the NCAA trophy, including a busload of supporters who traveled from campus.
At least 40 former Big Red baseball players, some coming from as far as California, sat in the lower deck next to the dugout, cheering on the team. When the night ended, Deegan carried the trophy into the stands to give the baseball alums a chance to share in the glory they helped create.
Over the past week, the Big Red’s presence at the stadium was such that vendors had long run out of their allotment of 200 World Series-themed Denison T-shirts.
But if fans came expecting a repeat of Wednesday’s comfortable 6-0 win over Endicott in the series opener, they were mistaken. Thursday was more than six hours of high-speed, nerve-jangling baseball.
Denison Athletic Director Matt Tanney must have sat in 10 seats throughout the ballpark, looking for the one that would bring his team good fortune.
“I gotta keep pacing,” he said with a smile. “This is just incredible.”
That’s a good word to describe Nowik’s display of power in Thursday’s first game. He belted three homers and drove in seven runs — one of the greatest tournament performances in Denison history.
It might have been a bittersweet footnote if the Big Red hadn’t rallied in the second game. Deegan wasn’t surprised his team shook off the disappointment to win.
“I’ve learned with these guys, the less I talk, the better — and I mean that,” the coach said. “I think to win a national championship, you need the toughness and the character that this group has, and so I thought they’d find their own way to get back in it.”
In the season’s final game, Denison’s hero hat came in all sizes.
Fishbein and Eron Vega ’28 each had two hits. Fishbein’s fifth-inning homer was the Big Red’s first hit. Vega and Erik Sundgren ’26 delivered RBIs in the sixth inning to tie it 3-3.
But the most clutch effort belonged to a first-year. Deegan never imagined Parker pitching seven innings in relief, but there was no way the coach was taking him out. He scattered two hits over 109 pitches.
When the program graduated star pitcher Nick Falter ’25 and lost three others to the transfer portal last spring, some wondered if Denison could play for a title in 2026.
To the doubters, they defiantly offered the rallying cry: “Not Just Yet,” making it into a social media hashtag. As in, don’t count us out until we have the chance to prove our mettle.
Parker’s remarkable outing was evidence that Denison keeps finding players to step up when it matters.
“This wasn’t a role that Devin normally has been in, but it was forced upon us because of the situation tonight,” Deegan said. “So I’m just super proud.”
Parker was ready to pitch one more inning if necessary. Instead, he joined his teammates, racing across the diamond to dogpile Lutte as hundreds of Denison fans celebrated in the stands.
“It’s so hard to win a national championship, and today was proof of that,” Tanney said. “They had to play 20 innings. But this bunch is so resilient and gritty. They never quit.”
