OMAHA, Neb. — It is 9 a.m. Wednesday and there’s organ music echoing from Charles Schwab Field. The NCAA does not love triple-headers for its Men’s College World Series, but sometimes Mother Nature plays the trump card, so here we are, Kentucky taking pre-game infield while morning rush hour is barely over outside.
It is to be a busy day in the MCWS, and in the end, a decisive one. By 10 p.m. three more teams will have been sent home and only Tennessee and Texas A&M will be left standing, the final two now headed for a championship series that should have broad appeal.
For those who like newcomers at the top, it will be a showdown between two programs that have never won a national championship. Only Tennessee has ever finished second — and that was 73 years ago.
For those who like contrast, there is Tennessee’s TNT lineup that has scored 25 runs in three wins here, and the Texas A&M pitchers who have allowed only three runs and 16 hits in 27 innings.
For those who like history, Tennessee is getting closer to becoming the first No. 1 seed this century to hold up the trophy. For those who admire dominance, it is yet another SEC showcase — the fourth time in seven tournaments the league has put both teams in the final pairing. The SEC is already guaranteed to have its fifth consecutive national champion by a fifth different school. Texas A&M has done nothing but play SEC teams here, which, as coach Jim Schlossnagle noted, “keeps our non-conference record intact. Seriously.” That would be 30-0 against non-SEC opponents.
For those who like teams on a roll, here come two finalists who are 3-0 in Omaha, their last two victories by a combined score of 24-4. Texas A&M is 8-0 in the NCAA tournament, while Tennessee has one loss.
Tennessee has the outfielders who keep crashing into walls chasing down fly balls, Texas A&M has the pitchers who have refused to blink, such as the sophomore who looks like a Boy Scout but mercilessly mowed down the Florida Gators Wednesday night.
How did it come to this? One long Wednesday in Charles Schwab Field:
9:55 a.m. — The ballpark is not its usual teeming June self when the national anthem is sung, with maybe 30 percent of the stands filled for a game postponed from Tuesday night. It’s 66 degrees when Florida takes the field to play Kentucky, which is 22 degrees cooler than the Wildcats' last game on Monday night.
10:07 a.m. — Florida’s Pierce Coppola throws a called strike to Kentucky’s Ryan Waldschmidt, the first of 942 pitches that will come from the mound in three games this day. Coppola is 0-4 for the season with a 9.16 earned average and has worked only 18.2 innings all season, but at this stage, everyone must lend a hand.
10:37 a.m. — Florida’s wakeup call had been just after 6 a.m. and the Gators were on the way to the ballpark by 7:45 a.m. clearly that gave their bats time to wake up because there was only one out in the first inning and they already lead 7-1, four of the runs coming in on a Brody Donay grand slam. The big news in the lineup is megastar Jac Caglianone batting leadoff for the first time in his career. He lines a single on the second pitch and Florida goes on to score seven runs in the inning.
“They keep walking Jac, so at least maybe for one at-bat they won't be able to do it when he starts the game hitting lead-off.” coach Kevin O’Sullivan would say later. “Sometimes you make lineup changes and decisions like this and they work out, and sometimes they don't.”
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12:10 p.m. — Coppola strikes out Nicholson to close the fifth inning, his 98th pitch. With the Gators ahead 9-4, he's in line to be the winner. This is his third season at Florida — injuries wiped out most of 2022 and all of ‘23 — and he has never won a college game. Ever. His first victory might come in the College World Series.
12:35 p.m. — You can’t say there’s no variety in Florida’s rampage: The Gators score a run in the fifth inning on a 414-foot homer and another on a bunt with a runner at third. The blast comes from Donay and is so massive he pauses to watch it sail away into the Omaha sky, tossing away his bat. That makes two homers and five RBI on the day for the No. 8 hitter in the Florida lineup. What’d he have for breakfast anyway? The Kentucky pitchers came to Omaha having allowed only three runs in their last 39 innings. At the end of the fifth. Florida leads 14-4.
12:48 p.m. — Kentucky hasn’t shown many strikes to Caglianone after his single, walking him three times in a row. The Wildcats pitch to him in the sixth, and he sends a drive into the right field stands for his 75th career homer to set a Florida record, and 35th of the season. Turns out to be his last. Afterward, he will come into the press conference holding the record ball.
1:28 p.m. — The rout ends 15-4 and Florida’s magical stubbornness continues. The unseeded Gators have now eliminated the Nos. 2, 6 and 11 national seeds (Kentucky, Clemson and Oklahoma State) and won for the ninth time in their last 10 elimination games going back to last year. They just won’t go away. “Kind of shows what we all want at the end of the day,” Donay says.
It has been a fine morning for Florida. Coppola’s first win, for example. “It means a lot, " Pitching coach David Kopp told me. What took you so long to get your first win? "It's been a long journey,” he says afterward. He isn’t kidding about the long journey part. Coppola started one game as a freshman in 2022 and then had a disc issue in his back and missed the rest of the season. Last year was a total washout because of shoulder surgery. This season was just hard toil trying to return to form. But he’ll always have Wednesday.
For first-timer Kentucky it seems a thud of an ending to its Omaha debut. But not really. “They made history forever,” coach Nick Mingione says of his Wildcats. “This is not how you want to end your season, but this is where you want to end your season.”
2:51 p.m. — Five minutes after the first pitch, Tennessee has its first run. Six minutes after that, Florida State starting pitcher John Abraham is gone from the game, having retired one batter. By the end of the inning, the Vols led 3-0. The highest-scoring team in the nation is in the house.
3:14 p.m. — Marco Dinges drives a shot to deep right-center in the first inning but the Tennessee outfielder grabs it and then crashes into the wall. Hunter Ensley has done it again? No, Ensley is still a tad gimpy from a catch into the wall the game before, so he’s the designated hitter. This time it’s Kavares Tears.
“Just another guy that’s not scared to run into a wall,” Ensley says afterward.
“I guess I wanted to be like him,” Tears says. And who was waiting for him in the dugout when he came in from his highlight play but Ensley? “He said it wasn’t as cool as his. He has a point but I’m competitive,” Tears says.
5 p.m. — Zander Sechrist takes a three-hit shutout and a 6-0 lead into the seventh inning. He’s thrown only 66 pitchers. Three different Florida State hurlers have thrown 134.
5:47 p.m. — The Seminoles hit one last line drive into a Tennessee glove and it ends 7-2. Florida State has sent shots hither and yon, and nearly all of them right at a Vols defender. "I'm still trying to grasp what happened,” Vols coach Tony Vitello says. “We got hustle and bustle there with putting on three games. And us being the sandwich game, it's one of the weirdest games I've ever been a part of.”
Strange, all right. Florida State hits more home runs than famously powerful Tennessee and the Seminoles pitchers fire more strikeouts. “Had a few of those balls landed differently or couple feet one way or another direction, I think this is a much tighter game,” Florida State coach Link Jarrett says later. “I'm not saying we deserved to win the game, but it was close to being far different than it felt today.”
But there is nothing strange about the run the Vols are on, with a lineup of both established stars and players such as Tears who had to be patient for their chance and now have carried that opportunity to the max.
“Guys have had to wait their turn to be in this situation,” Tennessee all-everything Christian Moore says. “We’re just a gritty team and we’re going to do anything to win. I know we have a lot of homers and that’s kind of our thing but we’re going to play hard for all 27 outs and I think we showed that all season.
“It’s a beautiful thing.”
Including this component: One centerfield wall, and two Vols outfielders running into it. “Those two guys, they’re crazy,” second baseman Moore says. “I wouldn’t do that. I guess that’s why they play that position and I’m on the dirt.”
One team’s door to the finals is another team’s ticket home. Florida State will return to Tallahassee still looking for a championship after 24 trips to Omaha. The fairy tale to break through the same year that legendary coach Mike Martin passed away does not get its happy ending.
“It's not easy to get here,” Jarrett says. “That walk in here is great. That walkout is very difficult. Very difficult.”
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7:12 p.m. — Before a packed house, Texas A&M has no hits after the first inning but a 2-0 lead, Gators starter Liam Peterson walking four of the first five batters before O’Sullivan is forced to go to his bullpen. The Aggies are renowned for being patient with bats in their hands — they lead the nation in walks — so they have waited Peterson into trouble When Peterson walks Jace LaViolette on four pitches, everyone knows what’s coming next from the Aggies' fans. The chant is immediate as it always is: 'Ball five! Ball five! Ball five!' Peterson misses on the first pitch to the next hitter — Ball six! Ball six! Ball six! — but recovers to strike out Jackson Appel. But that would be his only out.
8:30 p.m. — As Texas A&M extends the lead to 5-0, sophomore Justin Lamkin continues to become an Aggie legend. He goes five shutout innings, gives up three hits, faces 19 batters and strikes out nine of them. Combined with his start against Florida last weekend, he has shut out the Gators over eight innings and struck out 14 while walking one. He has a 1.42 ERA against Florida this season, and 8.33 against the rest of the SEC. He has become the Gators' prince of darkness.
“I think the big part of it is just having self-confidence in myself and knowing I can go out there and I can compete and play at this level,” he will say later.
10:02 p.m. — The long day ends with Texas A&M headed to the finals after a 6-0 shutout. The Aggies pitchers have been remarkable and made nearly every pitch they’ve needed to make all week to quell any crisis. Their two victims — Florida twice and Kentucky once — went 2-for-29 with runners in scoring position. In the morning, the Gators had piled 15 runs on Kentucky. At night they have four hits. One is a single by Caglianone — his final college hit.
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Where to start with such a performance? Maybe the pitching coach. “Proud is an understatement. I love these kids,” Max Weiner says. “We’re playing like 12-year-olds. We’re playing free and it’s really, really cool to see.”
He is asked to describe Lamkin.
“I would describe him as himself, nothing more and nothing less. Justin is Justin and I’m just glad everybody got to see that. Justin didn’t have the game of his life, he just pitched like himself,” Weiner says.
The player who has seen all the great Texas A&M pitching up close is catcher Appel, who came from the Ivy League and Penn for this chance. “They’re making my life easy right now,” he says. “We’re focusing on dominating the zone. Max Weiner’s got everyone in on that and it’s working right now.
“When you know our pitching’s going to do that and this lineup can put up any number of runs on any given day, it’s special.”
The drama of the early days of this MCWS is a memory. The first four games were all one-run decisions, three by walk-offs. But the combined score of the three games on the Wednesday card ends up 28-6. What is left as the ballpark empties are two former championship series outsiders who are now insiders.
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That would include Texas A&M’s Schlossnagle: “I'm a college baseball fan too. I'm tired of leaving before the championship. So personally it's awesome, it's fun to get to be a part of it, excited to play an awesome Tennessee team, one of the best college teams that I've — I mean, they really have a great team. Not just great players, but they have a great team.”
Tennessee’s Vitello: “As far as my emotions, I'm kind of at the point where I'm just following these guys. There are certain tasks I have to do, and there's direction I give them, and they'll listen. But kind of following them right now. Makes it nice.”
The players now have two days to think about what happens next.
“I remember coming to these games when I was 10 years old and always wanting to be a part of this,” says Texas A&M outfielder Caden Sorrell, who had helped his team’s cause greatly this day with a home run and three RBI. “So finally being here and making it this far, it's an amazing feeling. But obviously the job's not finished yet.”
For either side.
But at least Wednesday is.
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