The Cinderella story will continue.
Facing elimination in the Greenville Regional, Evansville rallied to upset No. 16 overall seed East Carolina with a 6-5 victory in Monday’s winner-take-all championship.
Evansville has clinched its first NCAA baseball regional title in program history and will advance to the super regional round this weekend. They’re the ninth team ever to make a super regional after being seeded fourth in a regional.
The Aces (38-24) again used the long ball to their advantage, starting with Kip Fougerousse’s fourth homer of the regional and program-tying 21st on the season in the first inning. Then, after ECU took the lead in the fifth, Mark Shallenberger belted a three-run, go-ahead homer in the sixth.
Evansville didn’t relinquish the lead as the veteran group continues to take the program to new heights.
“This means a significant amount to the University of Evansville, to our athletic department and to our city,” Purple Aces coach Wes Carroll said postgame on the ESPN broadcast. “I couldn’t be more proud to be an Ace right now. We went out and we earned that thing today. We delivered some big barrels when we needed to.”
Next up for the Missouri Valley Conference champions is a showdown with No. 1-ranked Tennessee (53-11) this weekend after the Volunteers swept the Knoxville Regional. They’ll play a best-of-three series in Knoxville, Tennessee, for a trip to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
NCAA BASEBALL SUPER REGIONALS: Which teams have punched tickets to next round of tournament?
This is Evansville’s fourth NCAA Tournament appearance at the Division I level (1988, 2000, 2006) while East Carolina sought its fourth regional championship in five seasons. History didn’t matter. Neither did the Aces’ 19-6 loss to the Pirates on Sunday night.
ECU finished 29-6 on its home field at Clark-LeClair Stadium, one of college baseball’s top environments. Two of those losses came to Evansville during the regional.
In their third meeting with ECU in four days, the Aces took a 2-0 advantage on the Fougerousse homer and an RBI single from Cal McGinnis. After the Pirates scored the next five runs, Fougerousse added another RBI when he singled in the sixth and Shallenberger came up clutch the next inning.
Meanwhile, right-handed pitchers Nick Smith, Max Hansmann and Shane Harris kept the Pirates at bay at the plate in high-leverage situations. Harris, who threw 81 pitches on Sunday, pulled off a 1-2-3 ninth inning to shut the door.
“This is his last ride and he was going to leave it all out there for us,” Carroll said of Harris. “I needed him to get three outs for us, and boy did he. What a gutsy performance.”
This team has proven time and time again that it won’t quit, having won eight of nine games this postseason. It’s already set single-season team records for doubles, home runs and runs scored. And its 38 wins are the sixth-most in program history.
Now, they’ll get to keep adding to those marks against the best team in college baseball.
“To come in here and earn this in one of the most hostile environments in the country, I couldn’t be more proud,” Carroll said.
