Tennessee Tech beats Seminoles
Davidson College has played baseball for 115 years, generally with little success. The Wildcats made it to the NCAA postseason for the first time this year, and they made a memorable debut Friday.
The No. 4 seed in the Chapel Hill regional, Davidson pulled a huge upset by beating No. 2 national seed North Carolina 8-4.
The Wildcats finished their milestone victory about an hour after another No. 4 regional seed, Tennessee Tech, beat host Florida State 3-1 in Tallahassee in the day’s other stunner.
North Carolina became the highest national seed to lose its regional opener since 2014, when No. 2 Florida lost to College of Charleston. The Gators were eliminated the next day.
College of Charleston, however, was in the tournament for the sixth time back in 2014. Davidson had never won a baseball title of any kind before beating Virginia Commonwealth University in the Atlantic 10 final on Sunday, and the Wildcats’ all-time record is more than 600 games under .500.
Davidson led 8-0 after five innings and moved to a winners-bracket game today against Florida Gulf Coast, the other team that is in the national tournament for the first time. Florida Gulf Coast beat Michigan, putting the Wolverines into an elimination game against North Carolina.
Davidson and North Carolina are plenty familiar with each other. The teams have played every year since Mike Fox began coaching the Tar Heels, who had won 18 of 19 against Davidson under Fox before Friday. North Carolina won this year’s regular-season meeting 7-6 in 10 innings.
Southeastern Conference teams went 5-0 in early games, and the Big 12 opened 3-2. The Big Ten, which tied its record with five teams in the national tournament, got off to an 0-3 start. Indiana and Iowa played late games.
No. 4 national seed LSU erased an early 3-0 deficit to beat Texas Southern 15-7 in Baton Rouge.
Kentucky won its NCAA opener for the first time since 1988, 6-4 over Ohio in Lexington. Vanderbilt, Auburn and Texas A&M also posted wins for the SEC. Arkansas, Florida and Mississippi State played later Friday night.
The Big Ten struggled. In addition to Michigan’s loss, Nebraska struggled offensively in a 5-1 loss to Yale in Corvallis, Ore., and Maryland gave up six home runs in a 9-1 loss to West Virginia in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The game of the day — at least through late in the evening — was Missouri State’s 6-5 win against Oklahoma State in Fayetteville, Ark.
Jeremy Eierman’s second homer of the game was a tworun shot in the ninth for a walkoff win. Oklahoma State had taken a 5-4 lead in the top half on a wild pitch. With one man on and two out in the bottom half, Eierman launched a 2-1 pitch from Trey Cobb far over the right-field fence.
Auburn’s Keegan Thompson (7-4) contributed one of the day’s best pitching performances, going eight innings to match his season high while allowing four hits and striking out nine Central Florida batters as the Tigers won 7-4 in Tallahassee.
Will Holland put the game out of reach in the eighth for the third-seeded Tigers (36-24) with a three-run homer to left field. Daniel Robert added three hits, and Josh Anthony drove in a pair of runs.
Vanderbilt beat St. John’s 13-4 in Clemson, S.C., with Will Toffey continuing his hot streak at the plate.
Toffey has been torrid since missing five games in May because of a shoulder injury, and he went 4-for-5 with a double, home run and three RBIs against St. John’s. He’s 19-for-34 (.559) with four homers, 13 runs and 15 RBIs over his past seven games.
The Red Storm led 3-1 heading into the bottom of the fifth, when Vanderbilt (34-22-1) began its half of the inning with six straight hits. Toffey’s homer put the Commodores ahead for good.
Vanderbilt had 18 hits. First baseman Julian Infante had three hits and three RBIs, and center fielder Jeren Kendall had two hits and drove in four runs.
In Tennessee Tech’s win, Ryan Flick’s two-run double in the ninth was the winning hit. The Golden Eagles (41-19) are seeded fourth and making their first NCAA postseason appearance since 2009.
They tied the Seminoles in the eighth on an RBI double to right by Nick Osborne. They had been held in check for 7 1/3 innings by Florida State freshman Drew Parrish, who allowed only two hits and struck out 12.
Kevin Strohschein had two hits for Tennessee Tech.