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NCCA Division I Baseball World Series

By Arnie Leshin 
Well, well, what do we have here? Will we face some new looks at the NCCA Division I Baseball World Series in the Elite Eight at Omaha, Neb.?
Eight Regionals are half complete in the best-of-three, three teams are at 1-0, and one team is already in the final field.
That’s 5th-seeded Texas A & M at 42-18. It advanced by winning twice against 12th-seeded Louisville, and now the Southeastern Conference entry awaits the final field while the rest will fill out the last seven.
Then there’s the 1-0 teams halfway there, and some are surprising, but the biggest one is the Big East’s unseeded University of Connecticut. Not only did it hit the road to Maryland and slip past the 8th-seeded Terps in the quarterfinals, but now it holds the lead over 2nd-seeded Stanford at Palo Alto with a long ball barrage that knocked four home runs over the fences.
Underdogs? Don’t tell the Huskies (50-14) that, they struck quickly and had the Cardinal fans stunned. There was a 2-run home run in the first, a solo in the second, three more in the fourth and amounted to a  6-0 advantage before Stanford (45-16) tallied twice in the last of the fifth. But as hard as it tried to catch the visitors from the other side of the coast, the Cardinal could never come close.
It got to 13-8 in the seventh and Stanford had already used five pitchers, UConn three. The guys from back east had clouted six home runs, the Cardinal three, and the Pac-12 supporters still couldn’t figure it out. Right, not even close and they looked headed to better times in day two Sunday when this one finally ended at 16-11 at Klein Field at Sunken Diamond off the Stanford campus.
Also on Saturday, Arkansas brought a 42-19 record to play 10th-seeded North Carolina at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill and had stellar pitching and strong defense in getting past the Tar Heels, 4-1, who dropped to 42-21 and needs to even things up on Sunday in the clash between the Razorbacks of the SEC and NC of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
One more and that was 12th-seeded Auburn (41-19) of the ACC versus 4th-seeded Oregon State (42-17) of the Pac-12, and it was the Tigers who roared past the Beavers, 8-5, in game one, with game two on Sunday and Oregon State in need of survival.
Then came the ones all deadlocked at a win apiece. Here, too, there were surprises.
At No. 1-seeded Tennessee (56-17) played at Lindsey Nelson Park in Knoxville, unseeded Notre Dame, as unseeded Georgia Tech did in giving the Volunteers fits in the regionals in Knoxville, the Fighting Irish (39-14) took an early lead on long balls and were up 5-0 before Tennessee got on the scoreboard. But the Vols could only close the gap from 8-4 to 8-6, then took a 56-7 record to game two.
There they bounced back to keep Notre Dame off the scoreboard and arrived with splendid hurling in carrying off a 9-0 zip to play again on Sunday and look for the top seed to make the final stop if the upset-minded Fighting Irish can get in first.
At 8th-seeded East Carolina (47-16) at Clark-Clair Stadium in Greenville, the home side handily won the opener, 13-7, but back came 9th-seeded Texas (46-20) to even things in the second game squeaker 8-7. So now they go at again Sunday with the winner take all.
Can’t forget unseeded Oklahoma (41-21), whose Sooners softball team just won its second straight national championship, and so it first stunned 14th-seeded Florida in a best-of-three in Gainesville, and then traveled to 4th-seeded Virginia Tech (45-13) and combined quality pitching with solid hitters to down the home side 5-4 in game one in Blacksburg, but then the Hoakies got the bats out and responded with a 13-7 football score final to set up the Sunday decider.
But right now only the A & M Aggies are in the driver’s seat. They already have the trip to Omaha reserved, the others still have another day ahead of them.
There’s a good amount of parity and all in quest of hoisting that championship trophy before huge turnouts.

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