At 8:00 a.m. Arizona time on Monday, the top-ranked Arizona State Sun Devils were still an overwhelming favorite to win their first College World Series since 1981.
And thirty-three hours later, that quest was over.
South Carolina erupted for 8 runs in the 2nd inning, and added 2 more in the third and cruised to an easy 11-4 win over the Devils, eliminating them from the College World Series.
With the loss, ASU becomes the first overall number one seed to go 0-2 in Omaha since the postseason expanded to 64 teams in 1999. Tim Esmay’s team finished the season 52-10 after losing back-to-back games for the first time all season.
For the second straight day, ASU’s starting pitcher just didn’t have it. On Tuesday, it was junior right hander Merrill Kelly who got roughed up. Kelly allowed 10 hits and 8 runs in just an inning and two-thirds of work. Mitchell Lambson was summoned from the bullpen for the second straight day, and allowed two more runs in the third inning before settling down. But by that time, the Devils’ climb was too much to overcome.
ASU first year head coach Tim Esmay was upbeat after the loss. ” I haven’t been any prouder in my years of being a Sun Devil than this team right here,” Esmay said. ” It’s an amazing team. They were fighting until the end. They didn’t give up. They played hard and that’s what they did all year long.”
The Devils’ starting pitching was not up to the task in Omaha. In the two games, Seth Blair and Kelly, who had combined to go 22-2 with a 3.46 ERA, went 0-2 with a 19.50 ERA in two games at Rosenblatt.
It’s certainly easy to point the finger at the pitching, but there were other areas of ASU’s game that were lacking at the College World Series. Their defense put them in a hole Monday vs. Clemson with two early errors.
Their offense mustered just 7 runs in two games and batted just .279 after averaging 8.6 runs per game and hitting .338 as a team over the course of their first 60 games. The Pac-10 leaders in home runs didn’t have a long ball. And the team that stole 134 bases prior to arriving at the College World Series didn’t swipe a base until Drew Maggi stole second down 10-2 in the 7th inning on Tuesday.
Yes, a bulk of the credit goes to the opposition. Clemson pitched brilliantly in beating ASU on Monday and South Carolina’s bats were blistering hot for the first three innings of Tuesday’s defeat.
But it just didn’t seem like the same ASU team that we’ve watched for the last 4 months.
If that Sun Devil team would have appeared in Omaha, I think the outcome would have been quite different.
