June 12, 2007

Beavers: Back to Omaha

OSU defeats Michigan 8-2

By CLIFF KIRKPATRICK

For the third straight year the Oregon State University baseball team will head to Omaha, Neb., to play for an NCAA Division I national championship.

OSU, the defending national champions, advanced to the College World Series by defeating Michigan 8-2 on Monday night at Goss Stadium. The Beavers swept the best-of-three Corvallis Super Regional, having won the first game 1-0 on Sunday afternoon.

The Beavers scored four runs in the bottom of the second inning and tacked on three more in the fifth inning and one in the eighth to secure the victory.

“That was pretty good,” said OSU coach Pat Casey. “There are so many emotions that go through your mind when you know you are going to play the last game on this field with the same team. Today was one of those days you understand that you are not only blessed to coach, but coach great kids. This is an unbelievable run.”

The players must wrap up their final exams today and leave Wednesday to be at Rosenblatt Stadium in time for their scheduled practice, autograph session and the opening ceremony Thursday.

Games begin Friday in the eight-team, double-elimination tournament. The Beavers will play their first game at 4 p.m. Saturday against Cal State Fullerton.

“What this team has done is amazing,” said Michigan Coach Rich Maloney. “There’s no one else in college baseball who has done that. I told (Casey) that after the game, that he has it going.”

This is the fourth appearance in the College World Series for the Beavers. The first came in 1952, when the Beavers were eliminated early after they lost the first two games.

The Beavers suffered the same result in 2005, but they won the national championship last year. After losing the first game, they won four straight to reach the championship round, a best-of-three series.

They lost the first game of that series to North Carolina, but came back to win the last two. Reaching the end of the tournament takes almost two weeks.

This season’s postseason run is particularly remarkable, considering that this year’s team finished tied for sixth in the Pacific-10 Conference and was in jeopardy of not qualifying for the 64-team NCAA Tournament because of a late-season slump and a poor conference record.

But the team’s early-season success — and the respect gained over the last two years — helped convince the tournament committee to give the Beavers an at-large spot.

The first tournament stop was a four-team, double-elimination regional tournament in Charlottesville, Va. OSU defeated both Rutgers and Virginia twice to advance to the Super Regional.

Michigan was supposed to be the home team for this Super Regional, because it had been seeded higher in its regional than the Beavers. But Michigan’s baseball stadium is undergoing renovations, and so the Wolverines didn’t submit a bid for the Super Regional.

That gave OSU the surprise opportunity for home-field advantage for this series. And just as the team has done consistently thus far in the playoffs, the Beavers took advantage of the break.