VANCOUVER – The UBC Thunderbirds are set to compete in the NAIA West Grouping Baseball Championship tournament in Portland, Ore., this weekend, with the first games beginning Friday. This will be the Thunderbirds' 16th consecutive post-season appearance, a record anchored in the very year UBC joined the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

The No. 2-seeded Thunderbirds (36-16, 18-10) will take on the No. 3-seeded Menlo College Oaks (33-20, 14-14) in the second game of the day at 1 p.m., with ace left-handed pitcher and Toronto native Conor Lillis-White (9-3) on the mound.

"He's been our best pitcher for the past couple of years," head coach Terry McKaig said of the recent 'Bus' Phillips Male Athlete of the Year co-winner. "He's a guy who we definitely want to have the ball this weekend."

Lillis-White opened up the playoffs in 2014 when Thunderbird Park hosted the post-season tournament. He pitched a complete-game shutout in which the No. 1 T-Birds trumped Menlo 3-0. He had seven strikeouts.

"We've been here before, we know what it takes," said McKaig, who will be coaching in his last postseason with UBC after announcing his move to the new position of Director of Baseball. "We've won this thing four out of the past six years, there's no reason we can't do it this year. We can do it again, and the players know that, they're pretty excited."

Last weekend's four-game sweep at Lewis-Clark State doesn't seem to have any lingering affect on the Thunderbirds, who drive down to Portland in time for a practice on Thursday afternoon.

"It's not so much about changing gears; it's a pretty natural shift into the playoffs," McKaig said. "Last weekend didn't count for anything—maybe a few personal stats, an individual dry spell or something like that—but it didn't mean anything. It was just the last weekend of the season. That's all, it doesn't matter. This weekend's a fresh start. This weekend it's the playoffs."

UBC and Menlo met five times this season in which the 'Birds were victorious in all but one matchup. The last time Lillis-White pitched to the Oaks, he gave up three hits in eight innings, striking out nine batters for a 2-1 win on April 11. His counterpart on that day was Thomas Cox (6-3), who will be on the mound for Menlo on Friday. Cox matched Lillis-White on April 11, giving up two runs in eight innings, but he ended up taking the loss. For the season, he boasts 77 strikeouts in 87.2 innings pitched..

"We spent this week talking through our approach," McKaig said. "Last week is out the window. Now it's the playoffs. We've taken the San Francisco Giants as a kind of model: they've won the World Series a couple times now in recent history and they didn't have a good offence because playoffs isn't about anything else other than scoring. You do whatever you have to do to get on base. It's about timely hitting, it's about coming up clutch, it's about laying down bunts, getting on base, executing, scoring, whatever it takes. It's about winning, it's not about anything else. It's about whatever it takes that day to win."

First baseman Bruce Yari (Waterloo, Ont.) leads the team with a .361 batting average and he enters the playoffs on a six-game hit streak.

Should the 'Birds take Game 1, they'll play the winner of Friday's Game 3 (No. 1 Concordia vs. Game 1 winner) at 1 p.m. PT on Saturday.