SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It was waiting time for No. 2 Florida while No. 1 Wake Forest and No. 3 Louisiana State played to join it in the NCAA Division I National College Baseball World Series’ best-of-3 finals.
Not that the Gators had it easy piecing together a trio of one-run wins over Virginia, Oral Roberts and Texas Christian, except now they had a refreshed pitching staff and some extra practice time to step into the championship finals that begin Saturday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska.
And it will be the Bayou Tigers they will face. That became the awaited news after LSU claimed the deciding Game 3 via an exciting, lengthy 11-inning 2-0 triumph over the Atlantic Coast Conference Deamon Deacons Thursday night.
After Wake began by edging No. 8 Stanford, 3-2, and LSU upended Tennessee, 6-3, it became a 2-team battle matching the Deacons with the Tigers. Game 1 went to Wake, 3-2, LSU took Game 2, 5-2, and then came the clincher won by the Tigers.
Said LSU second-year head coach Jay Johnson after it was over: “This is one of the greatest moments of my entire life what happened on the field tonight.”
In that bottom of the 11th, Dylan Crews singled to left field against Michael Massey, prompting Deamon Deacons’ head coach Tom Walker to call on his star closer, Camden Minacci, and his first pitch to Tommy White was a 90-mph slider that White pulled into the left-centerfield stands for his 23rd of the season.
“Nice to be going to the finals,” said White, “and nice to finally get past Wake Forest. “They made a change on the mound and I just gave it a ride to send Dylan and myself across the plate into a huge celebration.”
This was the conclusion of a fitting ending to one of the most anticipated non-championship CWS games. From day one, LSU was the consensus No. 1 team in the major polls, but on May 8, it was replaced by Wake Forest, which was top of the heap until this finale.
Perhaps the ACC wasn’t as tough for the Deamon Deacons and they went 54-12 overall. As for LSU (52-16), it got this far by defeating SEC rival Tennessee in a tough league. Now it gets to meet up with Florida (53-15), which it played in the 2017 CWS and lost to in bringing the Gators their first national title.
The previous year when Johnson was coaching Arizona of the PAC-12, he lost 2-of-3 to Coastal Carolina in the finals. Now he’s back and very fortunate by his own words.
“We just slayed a giant tonight,” he said.
The pitching between these two clubs was outstanding in all three games. LSU started Paul Skenes and Wake Rhett Lowder, and both are projected top-10 overall picks in next month’s draft amateur draft and they matched zeroes deep into the game as onlooking Florida players and coaches took notes.
“Skenes was just fantastic and Rhett matched him pitch for pitch,” said Walker. “It was one of the best-pitched college baseball games I’ve ever seen, with everyone who took the hill just out of sight.”
All until White sent the first pitch out of sight.
The Deacons played without first baseman Nick Kurtz, a .354 hitter with 24 home runs. He aggravated a rib injury in pre-game warmups and was scratched from the lineup 20 minutes before the first pitch.
Wake Forest batted just .158 and totaled eight runs in four games in Omaha after outscoring its opponents 75-16 in five NCAA tournament games leading to the CWS. It was in the CWS for the first time since 1955 when they won the national championship. Before that, they lost in the 1949 final.
But now it can only look ahead to beyond this as Louisiana State and Florida match up in a scheduled 5 o’clock start Saturday, with Game 2 slated for 2 and, if necessary, 5 p.m. for a Game 3. LSU seeks its seventh national title, the Gators their second.
In this tight test, the Baton Rouge team stroked five hits to a trio for the guys from Winston Salem. White had two of the LSU hits and both RBI. On the mound, the Tigers accounted for 10 strikeouts and a pair of walks, and for Wake it was 11ks and four base-on-balls.
While Florida might have cooled off in awaiting a final opponent, Louisiana State did get Friday off by eliminating Wake Forest. The teams did not meet during the regular season and thus this series is rated a toss-up.
