Kennesaw State’s magical baseball run in the NCAA tournament continued late Saturday night with a rain-soaked, 11-inning, 13-5 victory against state rival Georgia Southern in Tallahassee, Fla.
The Owls, winners of nine in a row and 25 of their past 26, tied the largest margin of victory in an extra-inning game in the NCAA postseason in a game delayed by one hour, 52 minutes by rain.
KSU then later lost 4-1 Sunday afternoon to Alabama, which won twice Sunday. The Crimson Tide eliminated Georgia Southern early Sunday afternoon with a 6-0 victory at Dick Howser Stadium.
That leaves KSU to face Alabama at noon Monday on ESPNU for the regional title. The game originally was set for 7 p.m. but was moved for television. A victory puts KSU in a super regional this weekend.
“It was an unbelievable game,” KSU coach Mike Sansing said. “I can’t say enough about the guy’s competitiveness. We’re here for 10 hours and it wears you down for sure. Overall, you look at it, 13 guys left on base which was critical for us until we got into extra innings. We had some scoring opportunities that we didn’t get and obviously we had the huge inning. Our pitching did pretty well. I was happy with all our guys.”
Unlike the Game 1, 1-0 victory against Alabama, the Owls got the offense going early, putting up a run in the top of the first for a 1-0 lead.
But Georgia Southern answered, taking the lead with four runs in the home half of the first off of just one hit, three walks, a hit batter and an error to take the 4-1 lead and eventually held a 5-3 lead when lightning delayed the game.
Following the sixth-inning delay, GSU pitcher Jason Richman sent a pickoff attempt to the center-field wall, the error scored two Owls to tie the score at 5.
Max Pentecost started off the 11th by lining out before 11 more Owls reached the plate in a huge inning that put the game away.
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