Brown, Cortland return to CWS

Friday morning, Vermont Mountaineer manager Joe Brown will guide his full-time team in their D-III College World Series opener. The head coach at SUNY-Cortland, Brown is attempting to win his second straight D-III title in what is his third consecutive World Series berth.

Brown has had plenty of success in the summer as well. Just a few months after his Cortland team won their first D-III title, he guided the Mountaineers through an injury-plagued season to their first NECBL Championship since 2007. With almost 50 different players suiting up over the course of the summer, Brown made all the right moves and his team responded, coming back from a 1-0 deficit in the best-of-three championship series to win.

He'll return this spring for his fourth season with Vermont, and he's had unprecedented success. Brown is vying for a fourth straight appearance in the divisional finals, having gone 1-2 in them. He won a title with the Sanford Mainers in 2008, but his stretch with the Mountaineers has been even better. He has a regular season record of 76-51, an almost .600-winning percentage. Vermont's been even stronger in the postseason, going 11-6, a .647-clip.

This season, Cortland entered with a target on their backs- something Brown has embraced, as he told Ithaca.com in an April interview.

“I think this team, in the fall, had a little bit of championship hangover,” Brown explained. “They were thinking we were pretty good and didn’t have to get much better, when in reality, you have to get way better [to repeat a national championship]. Everyone knows you now. Everyone knows your weaknesses. It’s been tough for guys. Every little mistake we’ve made has been blown up. Any team that’s beat us this year—go to their website five minutes after the game, it’s already up. But you relish that. Embrace being good and hunted. That’s where you want to be. So we’ll see.

After finally capturing that elusive first championship in school history, the Red Dragons (41-6) went 3-1 in the New York Regional to enter the CWS as the No. 1 team in the country. They beat Castleton^[1] , Ramapo, and Susquehanna to advance.

They play at 11 a.m. Friday morning against No. 6 Emory (34-10).

[1] Cortland rolled over Castleton, 14-4, in the regional opener. The sixth-seeded Spartans sent right-hander Sam Spencer to the mound, who went five innings and gave up eight runs on 12 hits. Ironically, Spencer played for Brown over the summer in 2014, throwing 34 innings for the Mountaineers.