SAN ANTONIO (May 2, 2018) – The goal of any team is to peak as the postseason approaches and Oklahoma Christian softball coach Tom Heath believes his squad is there.

Winners of five of their past six games – including a series sweep of a strong Rogers State squad – the Lady Eagles earned the second seed in the Heartland Conference Championship tournament, hosted by St. Mary's (Texas). OC will face No. 3 seed Lubbock Christian (Texas) in its tournament opener at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Coaches often are speaking in hyperbole when they call a conference tournament "wide open," but in the cast of the Heartland Conference softball tournament, it's absolutely true. Only three games separated the top seed from the fifth seed in the five-team tournament and every squad will come in thinking it legitimately can earn the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Division II tournament.

OC (30-23) certainly falls into that category.

"It's going to come down to who can pitch well, and play well, in each game," OC coach Tom Heath said. "I think we're peaking at the right time. We're going into this tournament after sweeping Rogers. Momentum is on our side. Our kids are confident. They feel very good about themselves. They feel very good about their teammates right now. We're going in on a high."

Entering the season, Heath expected the Lady Eagles to be successful, but they instead hovered around the .500 mark most of the season until gathering momentum over the final 21 games, when they went 14-7. Included in that run were a three-game series sweep at St. Edward's (Texas), five wins over Rogers State, a series sweep of Newman (Kan.) and a series win at St. Mary's.

"We're playing well," Heath said. "We couldn't be going into a tournament playing any better than we've played the last two series. … We are as good as anybody right now and I think they believe it. They believe they can (win the tournament) and they want it really bad this year."

OC will face Lubbock Christian (31-15) in the conference tournament opener for the third straight year. Lubbock Christian has won both those games, as well as a second tournament game last year.

This season, the Chaparrals beat OC in four of five games, with three of those losses coming on a blustery weekend in Lubbock when the Chaparrals' power hitters took advantage of winds blowing 40 mph or more.

In conference play, OC has the best batting average (.292) in the Heartland by a sizable margin over second-place Lubbock Christian (.267). The Lady Eagles have the league's top hitter (Madison Nordyke at .365) and doubles hitter (Kayla Eichler with 17) as well as the conference's top all-around player in Kaylie Upton, who is third in the Heartland in batting average (.354) and fourth in pitching wins (13).

The Chaparrals will counter with arguably the conference's best pitcher in Monique Francois (22-6, 2.03 ERA) and a lineup full of sluggers led by Morgan Dufour (16 home runs) and Lindzi Clemmer (14 home runs).

OC also has brimming confidence gleaned from the last game of the regular season, in which the Lady Eagles fell behind Rogers State 2-0 in the top of the sixth inning, but rallied for four runs in the bottom of the inning against the conference's top pitching staff for a 4-2 win.

"We can hit any pitcher that we have faced right now," Heath said. "We know we can. We know we can win any game right now. It's just a matter of how we're going to play that game. … It's a matter of timely hits. That's very important in these games."

Fourth-seeded Texas A&M International (24-32) will face fifth-seeded Rogers State (35-18) in the tournament's opening game, with the winner set to face top-seeded St. Mary's (33-21) later Thursday. The TAMIU-Rogers State loser will face the OC-Lubbock Christian loser in an elimination game Thursday night.

"This is my favorite time of the year," Heath said. "We're done (with school). They have no papers to write, no tests to take. Everybody else right now has to focus at least a bit on finals coming up. We can play ball and that's all we've got to focus on – having fun and playing the game of softball. We don't have any other pressures on us right now."