SALISBURY, N.C. – Carson-Newman baseball starting pitcher Kolton Casson was named first team all-region by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) on Friday afternoon.
Casson becomes Carson-Newman’s third all-region pitcher in the past four seasons and the first first-team all-region pitcher since Brayden Coe in 2021. The rookie pitcher becomes the program’s 16th pitcher to earn all-region honors. Of those 16, he is just the seventh to be named first-team all-region.
NCBWA first team all-region adds to already a laundry list of accolades for the freshman. Casson is a two-time SAC pitcher of the week and TSWA pitcher of the week. He earned All-SAC First team honors and was named the conference’s freshman and pitcher of the year in the same season, becoming the first ever individual in the South Atlantic Conference to garner two individual awards in one season.
As just a freshman, many of Casson’s numbers will be documented in C-N’s record book.
Counting Casson’s start yesterday evening in the NCAA Tournament, the Benton, Tenn native has a 2.35 earned run average in 95.2 innings of work. His ERA is the sixth lowest in a season and second lowest by a C-N starting pitcher. Those 95.2 innings are the sixth-most in a single-season in program history. Casson. The innings have come across 15 starts, tied for the fifth-most in one season in C-N baseball history. In his 15 starts, Casson is 13-1, including wins in his first 11 starts of his collegiate career. The 13 wins are tied for the most wins in a single season in school history and are the most in DII this year.
Casson has six complete games as a rookie, tied for the second-most in program history. He went the distance in three straight outings, with two of those performances being 12 and 13 strikeout efforts. Casson had six straight starts in which he allowed one run or less. In the month of March, he made five starts and won them all while also posting a 0.84 ERA.
Despite letting a lead-off batter reach at a .371 clip on the year, opponents hit .199 with runners on base, .187 with two outs and .212 as a right-handed batter. He did not yield more than more hits in any game on the year and pitched at least seven innings in more than half of his starts.
Casson and the Eagles are back in action today, facing elimination against sixth-seeded North Georgia. First pitch from Abbey Yard in Belmont, North Carolina is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. All of C-N’s games this weekend at the NCAA tournament will air with a free audio stream available courtesy of the Eagle Sports Network on cneagles.com/live.