When Thomas College baseball coach Greg King returned to the Waterville campus late Wednesday morning after doing some errands, he noticed some of his players already sitting on the bus that would take them to Orangeburg, N.Y. for their NAIA Region 10 best-of-three series against Dominican College.

The first game will be Thursday at 11 a.m.

“I had to go on the bus and tell them we weren’t leaving for another hour,” chuckled King.

It’s understandable.

This is new territory for the 19-17 Terriers.

King resurrected the program five years ago and had hoped to make it to the NAIA New England Tournament championship round by the fifth year. The Terriers exceeded expectations by overcoming a loss to Husson (3-2) in their first New England tourney game to win four in a row including 6-4 and 15-1 triumphs over top-seeded and home-standing St. Joseph’s College of Standish in the finals.

King had never beaten St. Joseph’s and his Terriers had lost all four regular season games to the Monks by an average margin of 5.7 runs per game.

“This is the first year everybody on our team was a legitimate player. They may not have been stars but they all have the ability to play. In the past, we’ve had some guys [to fill out the roster] who just wanted to see if they could play college baseball,” said the 31-year-old King. “I knew after fall ball that we had something pretty good. For the first time, every one of our players could do at least one or two things well. We’ve been getting better players.”

The most significant area of improvement has come in the pitching department.

“Our team earned run average is two runs per game lower than it was last year,” said King whose team’s ERA is 5.66. “We have numbers now. I can take pitchers out and put somebody else in [who can do the job]. In the past, I’ve had to leave kids hanging out there because I didn’t have anybody else to bring in.”

The pitching staff has been headlined by Waterville’s Geoff Burnham (5-3 record, 4.11 ERA), Clinton’s Jevon Owens (2-5, 3.53), Calais’ Jeremy Dow (3-2, 4.86), Wales’ Chad Stowell (3-4, 5.79), Caribou’s Seth Cronkite (2-1, 6.84) and reliever Travis Hotham (3-0, 3 saves, 3.41) of Albion.

Cronkite and Dow beat St. Joseph’s in the championship round.

The Terriers may not have eye-opening offensive numbers but they are peaking at the right time as evidenced by their 30 hits in the two wins over St. Joseph’s.

The Terriers hit the ball where it was pitched and sprayed it all over the field.

“It took us all year to do that. We kept preaching that to them,” said King whose club has been paced by 3B Scott Sibley (.413-4 homers-30 RBIs), 1B Hotham (.343-0-17), DH Josh Porter (.338-2-12) of Calais, catcher Lance Haynes (.328-2-23), 2B Arron Tripp (.300-2-13) of Frankfort, LF Burnham (.289-0-20) and RF Mike White (..265-0-12).

Bucksport sophomore center fielder Buzz Simpson and Clinton freshman SS Corey Pelletier have been defensive stalwarts and have chipped in with some timely hits.

The players credit University of Maine grad King with being the catalyst behind the success.

“He’s a great motivator. Everybody wants to go to practice every day. Everybody wants to play for him. He’s a great coach,” said Sibley.

Dominican’s 25-15 Chargers feature SS Chris Canelliz (.440-2-34, 24 stolen bases), CF Ian Keyser (.397-1-21, 23 SBs), 3B Chris Banos (.353-0-43), RF Chris Pensak (.344-7-52) and ace righty Rich Scalamandre (10-2, 2.31).