Big games require big-time performances.

In its biggest game of the season Monday, the Carthage College baseball team got several outstanding performances.

As a result, the Red Men are headed to the NCAA Division III Baseball Championships.

They used a superb pitching performance by Jordan Jaehne-Llanas and some clutch hits to defeat UW-Whitewater 8-3 to win the Central Regional title at Moline, Ill.

"This has been an amazing team all year,'' Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV said. "I don't know how to describe it.

"There were so many junctures where these kids could have cracked, but they didn't.''

That certainly could have been the case Monday in the championship round. Before beating Whitewater (30-19), the Red Men (36-7) lost to the Warhawks 4-2 in the double-elimination tournament.

But the Red Men bounced back behind Jaehne-Llanas, who limited the Warhawks to one earned run on nine hits in nine innings. Jaehne-Llanas struck out 10 and didn't allow a walk in being named the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

"Jordan Jaehne-Llanas just took over the game,'' Schmidt said. "It was a combination of his talent and his will to get that done.

"He came to Carthage to pitch in that game and now he's going to get a little bigger stage.''

That stage will be the baseball championships in Grand Chute, where the Red Men will play the College of Wooster in a first-round game Friday.

While Jaehne-Llanas was highly instrumental in extending the Red Men's season, he got plenty of support from his teammates.

Tyler Eickmeyer, the former Shoreland Lutheran High School standout, delivered a RBI single in the fourth, and Chris Shannon hit a two-run homer to left in the bottom of the sixth inning to give Carthage a 5-1 lead.

Mike Hughes then widened Carthage's lead, first with a solo home run in the seventh inning and then with a two-run double in the eighth.

The Red Men, who had 14 hits in the game, got three apiece from Trevor Whately and Hughes. Hughes also had three RBIs.

Carthage got a pair of hits from Shannon and Drew Roberts.

The Red Men had a much tougher time hitting the ball in the first game against Whitewater, which is coached by former Case High School standout John Vodenlich.

Carthage managed only eight hits with Shannon getting three of them. John Lequia, a former Park High School standout, had two hits and drew two walks.

Whitewater's Aaron Drott (7-5) struck out nine.

But Jaehne-Llanas trumped Drott's performance in the next game as he kept the Warhawks off the scoreboard until the sixth inning.

Jaehne-Llanas was joined on the all-tournament team by six of his teammates: Mark Sobol, Will Hodges, Whately, Shannon, Lequia and Eickmeyer.

"This is so much fun,'' Schmidt said. "I wanted this group to experience all of this because things have been so hard.

"Win, lose or rain, this team is going to have a great experience.''