Early hole too big for A&M to escape
Louisville tags Martin with 5 runs in second, advances to winners bracket with 8-4 win
OMAHA, Neb. — Nowhere in the Texas A&M script for its College World Series opener was the idea to fall behind by five runs quickly with one of the top pitchers in the country on the mound in Louisville’s Brendan McKay.
But not a lot of what the Aggies have relied on to get here has followed a traditional path.
Anchored by a five-run second inning, Louisville clipped A&M 8-4 on Sunday in the opening round of the CWS at TD Ameritrade Park, but it wasn’t easy.
After trailing 5-0, the Aggies (41-22) pieced together a pair of two-run innings in the fourth and sixth to pull within 5-4 and had the tying run at second base with one out but couldn’t quite close the gap.
Now A&M will have to fight back from the losers bracket starting at 1 p.m. Tuesday against TCU, which fell 3-0 to Florida on Sunday night.
“It’s about going out there playing the game like it’s your last one, because now it could be,” Aggies center fielder Nick Choruby said. “We say that throughout the year: Try to play
your heart out. Play like it’s going to be your last game. And now since it really could be our last game, I think that might be easier for us to do, honestly. So moving forward, I think just trying to stay as loose as we can and have fun with it, but at the same time, we’ve gotta go.”
Louisville (53-10) erupted in the second against A&M starter Corbin Martin.
After zipping through a 1-2-3 first, Martin surrendered four consecutive singles to begin the second to fall into a 2-0 hole. A sacrifice bunt and a strikeout got Martin close to minimizing the damage, but he walked leadoff man Logan Taylor on four pitches to load the bases and couldn’t produce a put-out pitch against Colby Fitch, who punched a full-count offering to right field to chase home two more runs.
The Cardinals tacked on one more run when Devin Mann smacked reliever Brigham Hill’s first pitch to left for an RBI hit.
“After the first inning, if you said, ‘Rob, you’re going to go (relieve) Martin,’ the very next thing I would have said: ‘You’re out of your mind,’ ” Aggies coach Rob Childress said. “He was so good in the first. Give Louisville credit. They did a nice job against him.”
Eventually, A&M returned the favor against Louisville ace McKay.
The Aggies put their leadoff hitter on in each of the first three frames but were 0-for-9 after that. Blake Kopetsky finally ended that frustration when he laced a double to right field after Cole Bedford walked to begin the fourth. Walker Pennington chased Bedford home with a fly ball, and George Janca’s single produced a second run.
McKay followed by recording five outs in a row until the sixth, when Bedford again stirred things up with a leadoff single. Kopetsky delivered another double, this one scoring a run, and Pennington pulled A&M within 5-4 when he pumped a long single to the gap in rightcenter field.
Sam Bordner took over on the mound for the Cardinals and doused the flames. Janca’s bunt moved Pennington to second base, but Austin Harmon flied out to center field, and Choruby flied out to left to leave Louisville in front.
The Cardinals expanded their lead to 7-4 in the bottom of the sixth with a misplayed bases-loaded ground ball and a walk that forced in a second run.
“From that point on, you have to be perfect to have a chance to beat McKay and to beat a team like Louisville, and we certainly had
a shot,” Childress said. “We got it within one and had scored two runs there in the sixth inning. Go back out and give up two runs, and from that point on, it was an uphill climb.”
Bordner made the climb much more treacherous.
After shutting the Aggies down in the sixth, he mowed down the next six hitters — including Kopetsky, who had three hits in his first three trips to the plate.
Lincoln Benzman added the finishing salvo with a perfect ninth.
“Our guys made them a bit nervous,” Childress said. “We had a chance to make a run. We just couldn’t hold it with our bullpen.”