COLLEGE BASEBALL DIVISION I WORLD SERIES — LOSER’S BRACKET

There was no quit in Vanderbilt.

In a loser’s bracket survival pairing, win and your’e still in, lose and you go home, and it appeared that the defending champion Commodores were going to pack up and head back to Nashville.

Third-seeded Vandy trailed 2-0 after three innings, and 5-0 after five against 9th-seeded Stanford. But in the seventh, it scored twice on a two-run home run by Dominick Keegan, and came to bat in the bottom of the seventh trailing 5-2 as the Commodores the closed to within 5-4 with one down, and with Stanford calling on its ace, senior right-hander Brenden Beck, the PAC-12 pitcher of the year, in the sixth, this was before a Cardinal solo home run put the lead at 6-4.

Beck was overpowering, fired in two-straight fastballs and got the fist batter    on a fly ball to center. But Javier Vaz walked on a full count, and 6-foot-7 pinch-hitter Spencer Jones stepped up and lined a hard bouncer to shortstop, and the wild throw to first sent Vaz home with the tying run. on the forced errand throw.

Then Beck lost it, throwing the first pitch way over the catcher’s head and in came Jones without a play as the comeback celebration began in the 6-5 thriller Tuesday night at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb.

Now it’s the Cardinal who was going home with its 39-17 record and Vanderbilt hanging around to play 2-0 North Carolina State Friday in a re-match of the Wolf Pack’s 1-0 win.

Vandy (47-16) won on the big stage in 2019, and last year’s event was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, and also won in 2006 and 2011.

Now it’s unseeded N.C. State (38-18) and 7th-ranked Mississippi State undefeated and a win away from a berth in the championship best-of-3 series.

And the Commodores and unseeded, unranked Virginia (39-26) can’t afford another setback. Both must win twice, Vanderbilt against N.C. State and Virginia versus Mississippi State.

That’s it, from the Elite Eight, it’s down to the Final Four in a World Series that has had several close games, and this latest one fits right in. Eliminated were 5th-ranked Arizona, 3rd-ranked Tennessee, 2nd-ranked Texas, and now Stanford, and all these games brought capacity crowds.