Lions Silence Hurricanes

By David Furones

Special to CollegeBaseballInsider.com

 

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – It was a meeting that pinned a junior pitcher who was 6-0 in his home ballpark this season and a freshman who had two starts under his belt in his college career.

 

Guess who won? Anyone who knows the game of baseball’s genuine knack for wackiness, would know whom to pick.

 

Fledgling youngster Bryce Barr outdid experienced Miami starter Enrique Sosa, Columbia manufactured a few runs and the bullpen did not allow a hit in four innings against the Hurricanes’ potent offense to get the Lions a 3-0 victory Sunday night in the Coral Gables Regional on Sunday night at Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field.

 

Columbia (34-16), which has played three games in a little over 27 hours, won its second elimination game Sunday to force a winner-take-all rematch with Miami in Game 7 at 7 p.m. on Monday.

 

“These guys, they’ve been believing the whole time,” Columbia coach Brett Boretti said. “We have a little saying: ‘If you want to overachieve, you have to over-believe.’

 

“Just an outstanding team effort by our guys tonight.”

 

The Lions, who held the Hurricanes to two hits (none from the fourth inning on) and became the first team to shut them out all season, came into the same Regional they were two-and-out in last season but entered with a different swagger this time around.

 

“They came here with no doubt in their mind that they could be in this position,” Boretti said. “It’s a credit to them, their mindset and being able to execute on the field.”

 

Miami (46-15), the No. 5 national seed hoping to clinch its first Super Regional berth since 2010 for a program already with 27 regional championships, will either have to wait till Monday or fall victim to the same outcome that has haunted the team in recent memory.

 

“The problem is you’ve got to play the game every day and you can’t be shocked,” Miami coach Jim Morris said. “If you’re thinking about the Super Regional, you’re going to lose the Regional. You have to play the game.”

 

Added second baseman George Iskenderian: “It’s not shocking. It’s baseball. They played hard. They won their [conference] for a reason.”

 

The Lions avenged the loss from Saturday night that originally put them in the losers’ bracket.

 

Barr (3-0) went five shutout innings, allowed two hits and three walks and struck out two for the win.

 

 

“It was just executing the plan – keeping the ball down, mixing in off-speed pitches,” said Barr, who entered Sunday with a 2.95 ERA in 14 appearances (none since April 21) and two starts. “You throw the ball where [pitching coach Pete Maki] tells you to, and there’s going to be good results. That’s what happened tonight.”

 

Another freshman, Zack Bahm, who hadn’t thrown in a game since April 15, came in and pitched three perfect innings in the sixth, seventh and eighth.

 

“We always say, ‘You don’t play the opponent, you just play baseball,’” Bahm said.

 

Adam Cline earned his second save on the day after also finishing off FIU earlier in the elimination game. He finished off the Canes by inducing an Iskenderian double-play groundout.

 

Nick Maguire outhit the entire Hurricanes lineup with three hits and scored two of Columbia’s three runs.

 

Sosa and Barr were dueling for the first four innings, matching each other with zeroes on the board each time out, but Sosa was the first one to flinch.

In the fifth inning, Columbia led the inning off with back-to-back singles, and Sosa hit a batter to load the bases. He then walked in a run against Jordan Serena, at which point Morris determined he had seen enough with Sosa.

 

“I was just missing the zone. I couldn’t control my fastball,” said Sosa. “They did a pretty good job of laying off of it.”

 

Derik Beauprez came in to a bases-loaded, no-out jam and traded a double play for a run and later finished off the frame to limit the damage to two runs.

 

The signs of ensuing wildness for Sosa were foreshadowed in the fourth when he walked a pair of Lions but escaped the inning unscathed. The rough fifth frame marred what looked like it would be an otherwise stellar performance.

 

Columbia added an insurance run in the seventh with a John Kinne RBI single.

 

Game Notes

·    Morris announced that the starter for Monday night’s game will be primary midweek starter Danny Garcia. Everyone else will be available aside from the three starters Morris has already used.

·    Columbia became the first Ivy League program to win three games in a single Regional Harvard had three wins in the 1974 NCAA Tournament, but they weren’t part of a Regional. A win on Monday would make the Lions the first Ivy League school to reach a Super Regional in the current tournament format. Harvard did play in College World Series in 1974, but there was no Super Regional in between.

·    Columbia has now won six consecutive elimination games this postseason dating to Ivy League Tournament.

·    Cline set the Columbia career record for saves with seven – three of his four on the year have come in the Regional.

·    Sosa lost at home for the first time all season.