Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Toppling Beavers tall order for field
OMAHA, Neb. — Oregon State already can make a case for ranking among the greatest college baseball teams of all time. If the Beavers win the national championship at the College World Series, there will be no argument.
At 54-4, the Beavers have the fewest losses of any team entering the CWS since Texas came in 57-4 in 1982. They
take a 21-game winning streak into their game today against Cal State Fullerton (39-22). Florida State (45-21) plays LSU (48-17) tonight.
Oregon State won the Pac12 by six games, the largest margin since the conference ended divisional play in 1999, and outscored three regional opponents 27-3 as the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Beavers then cruised to a two-game sweep of Vanderbilt in super regionals.
Now comes the hard part
— finishing the job on the college game’s grandest stage at TD Ameritrade Park.
“It is absolutely a lot of pressure, and it’s a different kind of pressure than any other experience along the way,” said retired Hall of Fame Coach Augie Garrido, who won three national championships at Fullerton and two at Texas.
Oregon State will take the next step toward its third national title since 2006 without its top pitcher, Luke Heimlich, and starting left fielder Christian Donahue. Heimlich did not pitch in super regionals after it was revealed last week that when he was a teenager
he pleaded guilty to molesting a 6-year-old girl. He did not accompany the team to Omaha because he didn’t want to be a distraction.
Coach Pat Casey announced Friday that Donahue was suspended for the entire CWS for an unspecified violation of team rules.
The Beavers have a pitching staff that ranks No. 1 in the country with a 1.80 ERA. Jake Thompson is 14-0, Pac-12 player of the year Nick Madrigal is batting a team-leading .383, and KJ Harrison has hit 3 of his 8 home runs in the last 5 games.
“If they win it all, it’s going to be hard for them not to
be considered No. 1 all-time,” Baseball America editor John Manuel said. “They had another national seed in their conference in Stanford. Arizona is in their league and was national runner-up last year. This wasn’t a vintage Pac-12 year, but it’s still a strong conference.”
Garrido said the Beavers compare favorably to the dominant Southern California teams of the early 1970s, the Texas teams of the mid1970s and early ’80s, and his 1995 Fullerton squad that went 57-9, won the national title and was named the greatest team of the 20th century by Baseball America.