The University of Evansville baseball team stunned the college baseball world on Monday when it beat East Carolina in the Greenville Regional to earn a spot in this weekend’s super regionals.

Starting Friday, the Purple Aces (38-24) will take on the tournament’s No. 1-seeded team, Tennessee (53-11), in a best-of-three series in Knoxville.

The regional title is the first in Evansville’s 100-year baseball history, and no one had a better view of the action than Seymour’s Charlie Longmeier.

The 2023 Seymour High School graduate committed to the Purple Aces in August 2021 and enrolled last fall. After participating in fall and winter workouts and watching the first two weeks of the regular season, UE head coach Wes Carroll approached Longmeier about taking a redshirt year.

Carroll’s thinking was based on two stark realities. First, the Seymour native joined a veteran team and his position, left field, is occupied by team’s most valuable veteran.

Six of the nine regular position players (including designated hitter) in Evansville’s lineup are seniors or graduate students. The three “young guys” are juniors.

The Purple Aces’ left fielder is Mark Shallenberger, a grad student who has started all 62 games this year. And for good reason. The St. Louis native is hitting .390, forty points higher than UE’s next best hitter.

The second cold reality for Longmeier is the NCAA’s red-shirt policy for baseball. Unlike football, in which a player can participate in four games (or 25 percent of the regular season) before deciding to sit out, baseball is more old-fashioned: if you play a single inning, you lose your red shirt.

Given those factors, Carroll advised Longmeier to sit out this season and preserve four years of eligibility.

“He said, ‘We think it’s in your best interest, being behind Mark. We don’t want to waste you on pinch-hit at bats.’ At the time, I was like, well, that sucks. But the more that I thought about it, the more the season went on, I thought it would be a good thing, especially learning from all the upperclassmen. The competitive nature in me wants to get out there, especially when we were going through a slump because I thought I could have helped. But I trusted in (Carroll), he’s always done me right.”

For Longmeier, learning from the upperclassmen means getting to observe Shallenberger.

“I’ve taken a lot from Mark,” Longmeier said. “He’s really helped me with my swing. He’s probably the smartest baseball guy I’ve ever been around. He just knows the game.”

Under the guidance of Shallenberger, hitting coach Matt Wollenzin and outfield position coach Griffin McCormick, Longmeier said his development has leapt forward despite his red shirt status.

“I think I’ve gotten a lot better since I’ve gotten here,” Longmeier said. “My arm strength has gotten tremendously better. I’m more confident. (Wollenzin), our hitting coach, has really helped me as well.”

Wollenzin assisted Longmeier in finding a summer baseball opportunity. When UE’s season ends, he’ll play in the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League for the Southern Ohio Copperheads, a team located in Athens, Ohio.

Longmeier said the biggest adjustment from high school to Division I baseball is the consistent quality of the pitching he sees.

“In high school, you’d face some people throwing 80 and occasionally you’d have a guy throwing 90,” Longmeier said. “Now, every single pitch you face, they’re mid- to upper-80s and 90s. In high school, you don’t see the same kind of changeups and sliders. I’ve had to adjust my eyes to see that kind of spin and to recognize when it’s off-speed and when it’s a heater.”

Carroll let Longmeier travel with the team throughout the season, a privilege not always afforded to red shirts. He joined the team on road trips to college baseball hotbeds, such as Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Mississippi State.

Early in the season, Evansville wasn’t the most fun group to be around. In late February and throughout March, the Purple Aces lost 15 of 22 games.

“We went through a slump where we just weren’t winning games,” Longmeier said. “We were losing to teams we had no business losing to. We had to do a complete reset. Then we got hot, and there was no looking back.”

The day before Easter, the Purple Aces beat Southern Illinois on a tenth-inning walk-off hit. Since then, red-hot Evansville has won 28 of its last 36 games.

Two weeks ago, the Purple Aces swept through the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, earning an automatic NCAA tournament bid. In the double-elimination Greenville Regional, UE stayed in the winners’ bracket with early wins over host East Carolina and Virginia Commonwealth.

East Carolina came back to defeat Evansville on Sunday, forcing a winner-take-all title game on Monday.

“There were sold-out crowds all three times we played East Carolina,” Longmeier said. “Their fans were rooting against us, calling us names, all that stuff. We just used it to fire us up.”

Now comes the hard part. Evansville must go into Knoxville and find a way to beat top-seeded Tennessee. Twice.

“Their stadium seats over 10,000 and it’s going to be sold out,” Longmeier said. “It’s everything you dream of. It hasn’t really soaked in completely. I don’t think it will until it’s completely over and you can look back and reflect. But it’s been amazing.”