How About Some Norse B-Ball in April

They'd be justified to call us "casuals", but maybe it's time we change that?

Apr 09, 2023

Article by Kyle Craven

Before we get too far into this, let me first address two things relating to the title and byline of this article. First, yes — the headline is clickbait. I am WELL aware that 90% of you clicked on this simply because you thought I might have some fun little recruiting news or maybe an exclusive interview with a basketball coach and/or player. No such luck. Nope this is a baseball article.

BUT BEFORE YOU LEAVE LET ME MAKE MY CASE.

This brings me to my second point, the byline. I know there are a good amount of Norse fans who do already follow the baseball team, along with all of the other sports. I see the posts on the Norse Nation Facebook page. The admins of that page do a great job of keeping many of you informed and a lot of you seem to know your stuff. If this describes you, then this article isn’t for you. This article is for those of us that the kids would call “the casuals”. We are the fans who, though we may feel shame about it when called out, simply don’t pay enough attention to other sports NKU has to offer: baseball included. But I think it could be time for us to do our best Clay Brock impression and throw a changeup at you.

How We Got Started

I remember back in 2017 when I met up with Chris Hart at Skyline Tavern. At the time, I was the co-owner and basically main content creator for the Norse Nation Facebook page (now up to nearly 4,000 members - congrats guys!) but I was looking for a little more. I remember browsing Twitter and hodge-podge of NKU accounts existed, some better than others, some not even active. The biggest one was Valhalla Vanguard, ran by my friend Troy Cornes and a couple of his friends Jack Talley and Seth Cooper. I LOVED what those guys were doing — they were hilarious. Whether it was constantly trolling Detroit Mercy Head Basketball Coach Mike Davis, Wright State fans or random dudes we’d play in non-conference, those guys were bringing the heat. But that wasn’t what I would be good at, and they didn’t need my help, they had content ROLLING back in those days. One account that really caught my eye though was a much smaller account. This little guy called Norse Report, an account with a couple hundred followers would display various spurts of activity. But when the account was logged in and tweeting, it was some of the best NKU content on Twitter. I was intrigued. I reached out to the page, soon learned it was run by Chris Hart, a friend one one of my good friends. Chris and I met and we discussed our mindsets. On the world, on society, politics, NKU and of course — sports. What I soon learned was that Chris was a HUGE baseball fan. And more than that, he was a baseball NERD (he would not be offended by this). A big reason he started Norse Report was that he wanted to have a place where he could break down the analytics of baseball, as it relates to the Norse.

This was PERFECT! I knew how to craft a sports related narrative (played baseball and basketball in High School) and Chris knew the analytics and how to read and apply data and trends. We were like Peter Brand and Billy Beane from the Moneyball1 movie. The main agreement we had was that he would cover baseball and I’d mostly cover basketball. Since then, Chris has moved to another part of the country, is working full time in the public school system, pursuing his PhD, and recently became a first-time DAD! For my part, I have dealt with my own reasons for stepping away, as highlighted in previous articles and posts. So needless to say, our baseball coverage fell off over the years.

But This Norse Team Has Inspired Us

As I write this today, the Norse baseball team has just completed a sweep of the Youngstown State Penguins, improving their record to 17-12 and 8-4 in Horizon League play. In this series, the Norse outscored the Penguins by a whopping 25 runs (35-10) in 3 games. On Friday, the pivot game of the series, left-handed pitcher (LHP) Ben Gerl ensured that the Norse would not be roadtripping back to Highland Heights without the series win, as he delivered the rare complete game shutout, recording 5 strikeouts (K) in what would be his 3rd win on the season.

Simultaneously, Wright State just lost a 3rd straight game against the Milwaukee Panthers, falling to 7-5 in league play which gives the Norse sole possession of 1st place in the Horizon League. Why is that such a big deal? Oh boy do I have news for you… You guys, this is the first time that Norse Baseball has been over .500 since the 2012 season, our last season in Division II. Yes, you read that correctly. The Norse haven’t been 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, let alone any other combination of wins and losses resembling a wining record in over 10 years. This team is special. At 17-12, and sitting atop the Horizon League, the Norse have already achieved the same or more wins than in 8 of their last 10 seasons and they still have 25 games to go. The two sweeps this season against conference rivals is also something to take encouragement from, as the Norse are showing success against the teams they will play the most all season.2

Behind Their Success

It’s fair to say that there have been a lot of contributors to the success of this team this season. Gone are the days where casuals like us will be able to talk about one player (IE: Griffin Doersching) and pretend like we know this team. These guys are team and that is showing on the field.

Let’s Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

As mentioned above, The Norse this year are a TEAM and that TEAM is led by Dizzy Peyton and the rest of his staff. Hired by former Athletic Director Ken Bothof after NKU’s COVID-shortened 2020 season, coach Peyton had some work to do. He had spent the previous 17 seasons in the Norse dugout as an assistant coach (not to mention one season as a pitcher in 2003), but none of those seasons had been as complicated as the 2020 season. The Norse went 0-17 before the season was cancelled, a record which, quite literally could not have gotten worse. But Peyton was able to quickly turn things around, improving the team’s overall success (17 wins and 19 wins) in the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Today, they are on pace for their best record in the DI era, 31 wins. Let’s meet some of the names behind those wins.

The Players Leading the Charge

On the hill, the Norse feel great with pitchers Clay Brock3 (3.32), the aforementioned complete game shutout thrower Ben Gerl (3.92), and Kaden Echeman (4.15) who are all in the top 7 in the Horizon League in ERA (earned run average)4. These three young men have been dominant for the Norse, especially when you consider the growth that two of them have shown since just last year at NKU. In 2022, Gerl, a sophomore had a 5.24 ERA, while his freshman teammate Echeman posted an ERA of 6.28. Brock transferred in from Central Michigan where he really did not get much of a chance to shine (he was only given 15 innings last season) — and shine he has as a Norse. Brock leads the team in ERA and WHIP5 and is 3rd in the Horizon in ERA. Their efforts as a group, combined with quite a few other solid contributors (who we will mention more as the season goes on) have been good enough to earn the team the conference rankings of: ERA — 2nd, Walks — LAST (least amount given up) and Opponents’ Batting Average — LAST (the best… I know stats can be weird sometimes!)

At the plate, the Norse quite frankly FEAST. In this batting order, everyone is hungry and there’s plenty to go around. The Norse have three players with over 1.000 OPS6 (one of which leads the conference with an OPS of 1.194) which is incredibly impressive. Just as a side bar — and I swear to you I am NOT MAKING THIS COMPARISON, I am simply providing context: Barry Bonds, widely regarded as the greatest hitter of all-time, boasted an OPS of 1.051 for his career. I get it, that’s the major leagues — hard to compare, right? As for the college ranks, Noah Fisher’s 1.194 OPS is good enough to be closing in on a top 50 slot in the entire country. Though OPS is heavily regarded as one of the best ways to measure hitting success by stat heads — everyone loves a good ole batting average stat. And you’re in luck because the Norse have PLENTY of success in that department as well. Colton Kucera (.365), John Odom (.364), Noah Fisher (.352), Liam McFadden-Ackman (.326) and Jayden Wakeham (.325) all find themselves among the top hitters in the Horizon League, all batting over .300 on the season. As if Noah Fisher’s OPS wasn’t impressive enough, he’s also cranked 7 homers (HR) and plated 36 scorers (RBI) on the season, good enough for 2nd in the conference in both categories. This incredible collective effort by the Norse batsmen has them sitting atop the Horizon League in: batting average (.291), RBI (216), walks (168) and OPS (.857).

And then there’s this…

So What’s Next for the Norse?

Needless to say, this is certainly the best NKU Baseball team in over a decade and maybe even longer than that. For the first time in the Division I era, and since they joined the Horizon League, this feels like a true contender. Of course that’s not to disparage the teams that came before these Norse, that’s just pointing out how good this team is! Building a baseball program is hard. This isn’t basketball where you need 13 players and 7-9 of them need to be really good and if you have the best guy in the conference you have a chance every game. It takes years and years of effort and work to build up a program. You need guys who are willing to stick it out for 4 years and put in the work to improve but also become ambassadors for the program and university while they’re here and beyond. It’s especially not easy when you play in the Horizon League, just a few miles outside of Cincinnati and your 100% outdoor season starts in February. Fans are hard to come by when it’s below freezing. But it’s mid-April now folks. The 0-17 days are over and we have a FIRST PLACE Norse team with less than half of the season left to play. It’s time to throw our support towards this team. The bandwagon is loading up, and there’s certainly reason to believe that its first big stop could be Regionals.

Okay, so I originally planned to get this out on Saturday, Apr. 8th, but as luck would have it — my laptop totally crapped out. It won’t hold a charge whatsoever and it’s a MacBook Pro so it’ll probably take me some time to get it back up and running. With that said, I finished this article out on my iPad so please be gracious with any typos or other minor mistakes. I did the best I could! Content may be a little slower to come by in the coming weeks and months as a result of this, but I am still committed to getting things out to subscribers of this newsletter!

Thank you for reading Norse Report. I created this newsletter with the hopes of creating a safe outlet and environment for Norse fans to stay “in the know” without having to rely on social media. Share this with your friends and encourage them to subscribe so that no matter how unplugged they feel they need to be, they will still get their Norse Report.