A&M, Louisville aim to settle score
COLLEGE STATION — Consider this Sunday’s collision between Texas A&M and Louisville in the College World Series a rubber match of sorts among the NCAA’s most prominent sports.
A little more than 10 years ago, the Aggies defeated the Cardinals in the NCAA basketball tournament to advance to the Sweet 16. In late December 2015, Louisville toppled A&M in football in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn.
Sunday’s contest, the first in baseball between the programs, has more riding on it than the two previous encounters in the other sports, considering the Aggies and Cardinals already have advanced to college baseball’s version of the elite eight — the CWS in Omaha, Neb.
The CWS field is loaded
with “name” programs, starting with No. 1 overall seed Oregon State (54-4), No. 4 seed LSU (48-17), No. 6 seed TCU (47-16) and No. 7 seed Louisville (5210). Cal State Fullerton (39-22) and Florida State (45-21) join the Aggies in Omaha as programs not cracking the top eight to begin the NCAA Tournament. No. 3 seed Florida beat Wake Forest 3-0 in a rain-delayed game Monday to earn the final spot in Omaha.
From barely to Omaha
A&M squeaked into the 64-team NCAA Tournament as one of its last four at-large entrants. It won a regional at the University of Houston with victories over Baylor, Iowa and UH. The Aggies then played host to a super regional and won the first two games of a best-ofthree series against Davidson.
While the A&M players celebrated in the locker room Saturday night, A&M coach Rob Childress smiled and said, “To listen to the locker room right now, that’s why we spend so much time away from our families … to see their joy is worth it.”
A&M (41-21) had never advanced to Omaha after playing in a regional away from College Station. Louisville enjoyed a more straightforward path to the CWS as the nation’s No. 7 overall seed.
Like the Aggies, the Cardinals swept all five of their regional and super regional contests, with Louisville dispatching Radford, Oklahoma and Xavier in the regional and in-state rival Kentucky in the super regional.
The Cardinals’ Brendan McKay is perhaps the most intriguing player in college baseball. Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball’s national player of the year is a handful both on the mound (10-3, 2.34 ERA) and at the plate (.343, 17 home runs) as a first baseman. USA Today dubbed the lefthander the “best two-way superstar in college baseball in recent years.”
The strength of both A&M and Louisville is on the mound. The Cardinals’ 2.85 team ERA ranks third nationally, while the Aggies and their 3.42 ERA check in at 15th. The Cardinals have four hitters batting at least .300, topped by Drew Ellis’s .367, while the Aggies have three, topped by Braden Shewmake’s .335.
‘Mission to do’
Louisville’s team batting average of .289 ranks 67th nationally, while the Aggies (.275) are about twice as far behind at 130th. The Cardinals also rely much more on the long ball, as Ellis’s 20 home runs are tied for ninth nationally and McKay’s 17 are tied for 29th nationally.
“This makes all the work you do and all of the frustrations you’ve had building up the last two years (worth it),” Louisville senior outfielder Logan Taylor said of the Cardinals making the CWS for the first time since 2014 after a couple of close calls in the two seasons in between. “But now that we’re here, we still have a mission to do.”
Shewmake, the SEC’s freshman of the year, leads A&M with 11 home runs, and three Aggies follow him with six each.
The Aggies will also have TCU and Florida in their half of the doubleelimination portion of the CWS, which becomes a best-of-three series between the last two programs standing. A&M has lost in the past two seasons in a super regional to the Horned Frogs. After Sunday’s opener, the Aggies would play again Tuesday.
“Our chances are as good as any other team that’s going to Omaha,” Childress said. “We’ve won five in a row — why not five more in a row?”