The Miles College baseball team is currently riding a 13 game winning streak, one of the nation’s longest in NCAA Division II baseball this season. Each win continues to extend the school record for consecutive victories. With the winning streak, Miles is also setting the team mark for home runs in the season as the Golden Bears hit 10 in their most recent three-game series against Benedict College. The 32 home runs on the season eclipses the 30 Miles hit during the 2017 season.
Miles College, with a current record of 18-9 (15-3 in the SIAC) has won 14 of its last 15 ball games. At the start of the season, Miles was 4-6 in the team’s first 10 games and it appeared to be they were headed to a sub-.500 season. After going 5-9 in its first 14 games of the season, things took a dramatic turn. Suddenly, Mile found a new direction. Since then, they have gone 13 games without a blemish.
The streak started on March 5th with a 12-5 and 18-3 doubleheader sweep of Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) foe Morehouse College. The Golden Bears last loss was a March 1st 11-4 mid-week nonconference home game against the University of Montevallo.
What Ty Roberts, in his 6th year as a head coach, and his staff have been able to do at Miles College has been an incredible turnaround.
Black College Nines had a chance to catch up with Mile’s head baseball coach to ask him about the HBCU’s hottest baseball team and the nation’s second longest DII streak.
We asked Coach Roberts about his baseball program and what turned things around at Miles.
“We turned around our season the weekend we played Albany State. The first 2 games of the series we played out of character, made errors that ultimately put us behind in both of the games. After game 2, I talked to the guys and asked them to look in the mirror and challenged them with the question… could I do more for our team to be successful? We also talked about how excuses are generated due to the lack of confidence in yourself, and excuses are unacceptable in our program. We jumped on them in game 3 and didn’t look back. We won game 3, 17-9 and carried that momentum into a 6-3 win against University of Alabama Huntsville. The win streak is now 13 games and is the 2nd longest current winning streak in DII baseball.”
Roberts stated the team motto is, “Don’t Widen Home plate! The moment that we let excuse be accepted, that’s the moment we become ok with bad results.”
The Golden Bears will put the current winning streak on the line with a big three-game weekend series showdown on the road visiting Savannah State on April 2-3. This weekend should be a battle of the top 2 teams in the conference and shake up first place in the SIAC.
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference officials decided to eliminate the conference divisional standings last year opting for all baseball programs to play a 30-game schedule with the top eight teams seeded for the conference tournament after completion of the regular season.
Savannah State is 21-6 overall and 17-1 in conference action. They lead the SIAC standings and are ranked No. 1 in Black College Nines (BCN) HBCU Baseball Top 10 “small school” Poll and ranked No. 8 in the National Collegiate Baseball writers associations (NCBWA) Top 10 South Region Poll. Miles College is 18-9 and 15-3 in the conference. They are the Nation’s No. 5 ranked HBCU small school team.
What is Miles College doing now compared to the start of the season? This team is always focused on today and not what happened yesterday or in the future.
The team’s focus is on what they are doing right now, hit-by-hit and pitch-by-pitch. The coaching staff is trying to be as consistent as they can every single day. When the players get to practice, they know what is expected. They know the routine and follow it before the next game.
Making sure Miles players know the fundamentals of the game is crucial and is aiding in the winning streak. The small things missed in games can kill you. So Roberts is trying to have his team very well prepared for games, and it is working out well.
Roberts has been fortunate to have some extremely talented players participate in his program the last six years.
Another reason for the success of his program is the hard work of his assistant coaches.
The staff makes sure players are practicing the fundamentals the right way and in a focused way trusting that the players understand they have an ownership in the program.
It’s about the program and what the players are willing to put in and get out of it. If they are willing to put the work in, great things can happen. And obviously, that’s been the case during the 13 game winning streak.