OMAHA, Neb. – LSU coach Paul Mainieri joked Monday that he was counting on his players to come through with a win today for his wife’s birthday.
When all was said and done, Karen Mainieri and Tiger fans everywhere got their wish.
“I told the kids after the game, ‘Thanks for getting me off the hook,'” the second-year coach joked after the game.
After struggling to score runs all afternoon, LSU entered the bottom of the ninth inning trailing Rice, 5-2, before scoring four runs .
Junior outfielder Nicholas Pontiff began the inning with a groundout to third base, and the team that had seemed fated for nothing but success for the past two months looked destined for an early exit from the 2008 College World Series.
But as they had done so many times before, it was then, with their backs against the wall, the Tigers took control of the game and came out with the heart-stopping win.
“Even though the first guy got out for us in the ninth, there’s still two outs left,” said sophomore designated hitter Blake Dean. “It’s never done until that third out’s made.”
Junior right fielder Derek Helenihi began the Tigers’ rally with a single that willed its way up the middle and off the glove of Rice sophomore second baseman Jimmy Comerota.
After the single, Mainieri opted to pinch hit for sophomore second baseman Ryan Schimpf with sophomore catcher Sean Ochinko.
Rice senior reliever Cole St. Clair quickly got ahead of Ochinko in the count, 0-2, before hitting him with a pitch and putting runners on first and second base.
LSU senior third baseman Michael Hollander came up the next at bat 0-for-4 on the day. He shot an RBI single up the middle to put runners on first and second base again.
And then the Tigers’ miracle rally seemed to be coming up just short as sophomore outfielder Jared Mitchell missed on two big swings to start his at bat before grounding what seemed to be a perfect double-play ball to Rice freshman shortstop Rick Hague.
But Hague muffed the play – the Owls’ third error of the game.
“We’re trying to do too much,” said Rice coach Wayne Graham. “And we’ve done this a few times this year when we should be getting an out, and we’re trying to do too much. That’s just something to work on.”
The next batter, Dean, drilled the final pitch of the game deep off the left field wall, and pinch runner Chris McGhee, Hollander and Mitchell all made their way home, giving the Tigers’ another come-from-behind, postseason win.
“When I saw [Hollander], I was thinking, ‘Is this going to be like the movie ‘Major League’ where one’s sliding one way and the other one’s sliding the other way,'” Mitchell said. “It was a lot of excitement.”
Dean’s walkoff double kept LSU alive to play North Carolina on Thursday evening. The Tar Heels lost to Fresno State on Tuesday night.
Graham and the Rice players said they knew about LSU’s recent history of big comebacks, but they thought they had killed enough of the Tigers’ momentum on a big play in the eighth inning to escape with the victory.
After a balk by St. Clair scored LSU’s first run of the game in the bottom of the seventh, the Tigers began to get things rolling in the eighth.
Mitchell reached base on an error to lead off the inning, and freshman catcher Micah Gibbs drove him home with an RBI double to right field, cutting the Owls’ lead to 5-2.
Gibbs headed home one batter later on a single by freshman shortstop DJ LeMahieu but was thrown out at the plate, ending the LSU half of the eighth.
“That run scores, it definitely changes the game – they had momentum building,” said Rice junior catcher Adam Zornes. “But for us to get that out, there was a lot of emotion. Everybody was out there screaming. To get that out in that inning and go back in, I think it definitely in my mind gave us the sense that we were going to win the game.”
While it was the clutch hitting in the bottom of the ninth that put the Tigers ahead and received much of the glory, Mainieri and the hitters were quick to credit every member of the team – particularly the pitchers.
Senior Jared Bradford started the game, striking out 10 batters and allowing five runs through 6 2/3 innings. Junior Louis Coleman picked up the win with two strikeouts and no runs allowed in two innings of relief.
“Every time [Bradford] goes out there, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to give it all he has,” Hollander said. “And Louis the past couple weeks has been like our MVP. He just goes out there and shuts the door when he needs to. And when he needs to keep us close, he keeps us close like he did today. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to come back as much as we have over the past couple of weeks.”
The Tigers’ comeback came six years to the day that Mainieri’s Notre Dame team defeated Rice in a College World Series elimination game with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.
“Personally, it was like Deja vu,” Mainieri said. “Six years ago today, I won like this when I was coaching at Notre Dame, and I just can’t believe that one person could be so blessed to experience something like this twice in a lifetime.”
—-Contact Jerit Roser at [email protected]