Baseball fans can watch the 2016 College World Series Final live online and see if the surprising Arizona Wildcats or the even more surprising Coastal Carolina Chanticleers will take home the title.
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Coach Gary Gilmore has won 1,098 games in 27 seasons as head man at South Carolina-Aiken and Coastal Carolina.
Just like Cloney’s last start, the Arizona got on the board early. “Just to kind of give you an idea, heck, when we had our first weekend practice and had our first team meeting, I said, ‘I’ll see you guys at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning, ‘ and I had two kids sitting there at the end of the meeting and they come up to me and say, ‘Coach, I can’t be at practice’. No matter how far we got knocked down, we came right back, and ultimately didn’t believe there was anyone who could beat us”. That’s the highest strikeout rate since aluminum bats were introduced to the college game in 1974 and a big part of the reason that there have only been 6.4 runs per game. That was all for Hopeck, as the righty ended up throwing 103 pitches over 6.1 innings, surrendering just two runs and walking three, while striking out five.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION: Neither Coastal Carolina nor Arizona has allowed a stolen base in the CWS.
Coastal answered with four runs in the home half of the fourth to take a 7-1 lead. The throw came into second, and the shortstop cut it off, costing CCU as the throw would have had gunned down Ramer if it had made it to the bag and the second baseman. You sit on the offspeed, and he throws a fastball.
“It had a College World Series-type feel to it. And we won the two games we played here”, he said. We went to bed that night and they said “hey you’re playing on Friday” after playing four games in 30 hours.
Arizona tacked on a few more runs to cushion their pitcher’s lead heading into the seventh inning stretch.
Arizona hitters added a couple insurance runs in the 7th inning. Both teams have depleted staffs. Coastal Carolina played three games in three days and Arizona three games in four days.
The Wildcats scored in the first when Aguilar singled in Cody Ramer, who led off with a double.
“Right when he took over, he told us seniors he wanted it to be the best past year of our lives”, right fielder Zach Gibbons said. And I just have to thank Coach for putting me in that order and trusting me a lot so I could get that opportunity. Zach Gibbons with the #SCTop10 grab to keep Arizona’s 3-0 lead! Anthony Marks singled leading off and Zach Remillard bunted down the third-base line for a base hit on a close play.
In 2016 the Auburn pitching staff had an ERA of 4.57, which was good enough for 12 in the SEC.
“It’s one of those things I don’t think we’ve thought about yet”, senior right fielder Connor Owings said of potentially winning a national title.
The ninth inning provided some drama as well. Reliever Bobby Holmes finished the inning and the rest of the game for the Chanticleers.
Cloney has not allowed a run in 16 innings pitched in Omaha, having a seven inning performance against UC-Santa Barbara on Wednesday.
Coastal Carolina was shut out for just the second time this season, and first since an 11-0 loss to Wake Forest.
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“People were like, ‘Hey, you’re in the Pac-12, you don’t need to do that anymore.’ But I’m really glad we did it that way because it set us up very good for an at-large bid, potentially to host”. “The adrenaline is still going”.
