San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Mississippi State defeats Stanford; Vandy pitcher stars
Ethan Small struck out eight over six innings, Dustin Skelton hit two doubles and host Mississippi State beat Stanford 6-2 in the first game of an NCAA Tournament best-of-three super regionals.
Mississippi State (50-13) scored one run in the second, two in the third and three in the fourth to take a 6-1 lead.
Small (10-2) gave up just five hits and one unearned run. The left-hander was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers with the 28th overall pick last week.
Stanford (45-13) jumped to a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Andrew Daschbach’s sacrifice fly, but didn’t score again until the eighth. Freshman Kumar Rocker pitched the eighth no-hitter in NCAA Tournament history, striking out a career-high 19, as Vanderbilt beat Duke 3-0 to force the Nashville Super Regional to a deciding third game.
Rocker (10-5), the son of former NFL lineman Tracy Rocker, came out for the bottom of the ninth and struck out the side swinging, finishing with 131 pitches thrown. Host Louisville (49-16) became the first team to clinch a spot in the College World Series. The Cardinals’ Bobby Miller carried a no-hitter through eight innings in a 12-0 win that wrapped up a two-game sweep of East Carolina in a super regional. Kevin Kendall doubled home the winning run in the 12th inning as UCLA (52-9) won 5-4 over Michigan (44-20) to force a decisive third game in the series in Los Angeles.
In other super regional openers: Florida State, trying to return coach Mike Martin to the CWS for a 17th time and give the alltime NCAA coaching wins leader one last shot at his first national title, overcame a fourrun deficit for the first time this season to beat host LSU 6-4. The Seminoles (40-21) also continued Martin’s streak of winning at least 40 games each of his 40 years at the helm.
Reese Albert hit two homers, the first a three-run shot that tied it 4-all in the seventh. The second made it a two-run game in the ninth, and JC Flowers worked a stressful ninth to put away the Tigers (40-25). Jack Kenley’s three-run homer in the first inning ignited 2018 national runner-up Arkansas in an 11-2 win over Mississippi. The host Razorbacks (45-17) got a career-high 81⁄3 innings from Seattle Mariners secondround pick Isaiah Campbell. Auburn (37-25), down three runs after seven innings, scored nine runs in the last two to beat host North Carolina 11-7. Valenzuela hired: St. Mary’s Eric Valenzuela was hired as Long Beach State head coach.