At the end of a long, chaotic afternoon, Florida State stood on the brink of elimination in the NCAA baseball tournament.
Indiana, one of the country’s biggest surprises, is on the verge of reaching its first College World Series after beating the Seminoles 10-9 at Howser Stadium in the super regional opener Saturday. FSU, the No. 7 seed nationally, must win Sunday (1 p.m., ESPNU) to force a deciding game Monday in the best-of-three series.
“It’s important to win Game 1 no matter how it happens,” Hoosiers coach Tracy Smith said after the four-hour, 16-minute game. “Sloppy, but we’ll take it.”
The Seminoles (47-16) threatened in the ninth but fell short. They pulled within one on D.J. Stewart’s RBI single up the middle, then had runners on second and third with one out. Indiana’s Will Coursen-Carr ended the game by getting Stephen McGee and Marcus Davis to pop out.
“No doubt in my mind we were gonna tie it, and there was a good feeling we were gonna win it,” FSU coach Mike Martin said.
Tracy was thinking virtually the same thing and said, “We were just hoping, honestly, to get out of there with a tie and go to extra innings.”
It was a huge win for the Hoosiers (47-14) in their first super regional appearance.
FSU pitcher Luke Weaver started hot with three hitless innings, but Indiana figured him out in the fourth. Will Nolden led off with a single, and Kyle Schwarber brought him in on a two-run homer, his 18th this season.
Indiana followed with Michael Basil’s RBI single and a run-scoring double by Casey Smith to go ahead 4-0.
Weaver gave up five earned runs in six innings. He entered the game with a 1.95 ERA and had given up a total of six runs in his previous six starts.
“They took a lot of mistakes that I might I have left over the plate and capitalized on them,” he said. “They got the key hits here and there. They came out ready to hit, and I didn’t have my best stuff.”
FSU immediately rallied with four runs in the bottom of the inning. Indiana pulled starter Joey DeNato after he hit John Nogowski and walked Jose Brizuela to start the inning. At the time he came out, DeNato had given up one hit and owned a 4-0 lead, but he had walked four and hit two batters.
The Seminoles cashed in against his replacement, Scott Effross. Brett Knief and Giovanny Alfonzo hit back-to-back singles, Stewart brought home a run on a fielder’s choice and McGee, a former Port St. Lucie High School standout, tied it with an RBI single to left field.
Alfonzo, from Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce, gave FSU its first lead with an RBI single the next inning, and the Seminoles were ahead 6-5 after six innings. Indiana scored four times in the seventh and once in the eighth to lead 10-6.
Over the previous four NCAA tournaments, the team that won Game 1 of the super regional won the series 25 of 32 times. In 2008, Florida State lost the opener to Wichita State before winning the next two to advance.
“It ain’t over,” Martin said. “We’re gonna play our butts off tomorrow — and I really, really love this team.”
Saturday’s other games
North Carolina 6, South Carolina 5: Freshman Skye Bolt hit a game-winning RBI single in the ninth inning to lift the Tar Heels (56-9), the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament, over the Gamecocks (42-19) in the opener of the super regional series in Chapel Hill, N.C. North Carolina reached the super regionals with a 12-11, 13-inning win over Florida Atlantic on Monday night.
Mississippi State 11, Virginia 6: Adam Frazier went 6 for 6 and drove in three runs to help the Bulldogs (47-18) beat the Cavaliers (50-11) in the first game of the Charlottesville (Va.) super regional.
Louisville 5, Vanderbilt 3: Matt Helms delivered a two-out, two-run pinch-hit single in the seventh inning to lead the Cardinals (50-12) past the Commodores (54-11), who are seeded No. 2 overall, in a super regional opener in Nashville, Tenn.
North Carolina State 4, Rice 3: Jake Fincher's single in the ninth inning drove in the winning run as the Wolfpack (47-14) defeated the Owls (44-18) in the opener of the Raleigh (N.C.) super regional series.
The Associated Press contributed to this roundup.
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