No. 8 Beavers Open Super Regional by Beating Stanford 4-3

Salem-News.com Sports

CORVALLIS - Oregon State's Mitch Canham doubled home the winning run with two out in the seventh inning, lifting the No. 8-ranked Beavers to a 4-3 victory Saturday night in the opening game of the NCAA Super Regional at Goss Stadium at Coleman Field. Dallas Buck pitched eight strong innings to earn the win for OSU (43-14 overall), striking out six.

The Beavers and Cardinal (33-26) will continue the best-of-three series on Sunday at 7 p.m. The game can be heard on KEJO-AM (1240) in the Corvallis area, KUIK-AM (1360) in the Portland area and KKNX-AM (840); it will be televised in the State of Oregon on the ESPN2 cable network. It can also be seen and heard live via subscription on the internet at www.osubeavers.com.

“The first game is huge, obviously,“ said OSU outfielder Cole Gillespie, who went 2-for-3 to set the school record for total bases in a season with 144. “You don`t want to dig yourself into a hole. Winning this game, we have a lot of confidence going into Sunday.“

Added Beaver shortstop Darwin Barney: “I think today`s win was huge for morale. You always want that first win. I heard it was something like 85 percent of the teams that win the first game (of a Super Regional) go on to the College World Series.“

On Saturday, a sellout crowd of 3,173, most clad in Beaver orange, didn't leave disappointed as OSU won for the ninth time in its last 10 games. The game between the two Pacific-10 teams was a taut affair, with neither building more than a one-run advantage.

“Stanford is a tough team to handle if you make mistakes,“ OSU head coach Pat Casey said. “When you get to this point where there are only 16 teams left, a pretty good team is going to lose a game here and there.“

OSU played errorless defense and limited an opponent to three or fewer runs for the ninth straight game.

“That`s what got us here – pitching and defense,“ Casey said. “We`ve lived with that all season and expect it. We just play really solid defense in the infield. And here gain, when you have Dallas on the mound, you are going to have to defend.“

Oregon State second baseman Chris Kunda and first baseman Bill Rowe set the tone on the first hitter of the game, as Kunda ranged behind the bag at second to snare a grounder by Ryan Seawell and then flipped to Rowe, who made a nifty stretch and scoop to record the out. Beaver shortstop Darwin Barney and third baseman Shea McFeely added tough plays later in the game, and Barney and Kunda combined on a double play to end the eighth and send OSU into the final inning with that 4-3 lead.

Meanwhile, the Beavers took advantage of three Stanford errors to score a pair of unearned runs against Cardinal starter Greg Reynolds, who was the second overall pick in this past week`s Major League Baseball amateur draft.

“It was obviously a great game,“ Stanford head coach Mark Marquess said. “It`s just one of those things when you play a good team – we just gave them a couple extra outs and it really hurt us. They took advantage of that, which good teams do.

“On the whole it was a very good atmosphere, a lot of excitement – a great college baseball game; unfortunately, we just came up a bit short.“

In the eighth inning, Rowe reached on a fielding error by Cardinal first baseman Jason Castro, was sacrificed to second by Tyler Graham and advanced to third on John Wallace`s groundout. Canham then lined a no-ball, one-strike pitch to left-centerfield to score Rowe with what turned out to be the game-winner.

“I just hit it the other way,“ Canham said. “I don`t think the hit was the big thing in the game. I think all the little stuff that everybody else was doing – Darwin putting down a bunt, Dallas throwing real well and getting ground balls …“

Buck allowed a two-run homer by Jim Rapoport in the top of the third inning that put the Cardinal up 2-1, then a run in the fifth on a hit batter and a pair of two-out singles by Chris Lewis and Castro to tie the game at 3-3. He allowed just one baserunner and faced the minimum number of hitters over his final 3 1/3 innings as he improved to 12-2 this season.

“My stuff was about the same as it has been all year,“ Buck said. “My fastball has gotten me out of a lot of jams in past years, but it hasn`t been there this year … I`ve got to make pitches I`ve never made before. I`m pitching a lot different than I have.“

Buck allowed eight hits and two walks. His 12 wins ties him for second on OSU`s all-time list of single-season leaders, matching his dozen victories from 2005, and his 27-9 career record moves him into a tie for fifth place on OSU`s all-time list of career wins leaders.

“He did a good job – he pitched like he normally pitches,“ Marquess said of Buck, who had shut out the Cardinal in his 8 1/3 innings of a 1-0 win during the regular season. “We hit a couple of balls hard at people and we had a couple of chances to get a hit and didn`t. He pitched very well, obviously.“

Kevin Gunderson then retired Stanford in order in the ninth inning, recording his 17th save of the season.

Consecutive singles by the Beavers in the first inning and a Stanford pitching miscue led to the game's first run. Reynolds, attempting to pick off Cole Gillespie at first, was called for a balk, giving Chris Kunda a free pass home from third.

The Cardinal took a 2-1 lead in the third after Rapoport hit his third home run of the season, a blast that sailed well over the rightfield fence, he finished 2-for-3 for Stanford. The two runs were more than Stanford had scored in the regular-season series between the teams, when the Beavers limited the Cardinal to just one run in three games.

OSU recaptured the lead in the bottom of the frame. A Rowe single through the right side plated Kunda, who scored unearned after reaching base on an error by Cardinal third baseman Randy Molina. The Beavers loaded the bases, then Reynolds walked Wallace to force in the go-ahead run.

Both pitchers grew stronger as the game wore on. Reynolds (7-5) struck out nine and allowed seven hits, before Matt Manship took over in the eighth in relief.

The Beavers looked poised to break the game open in the bottom of the eighth, loading the bases on Manship with two outs. But the senior righthander threw three consecutive strikes to Tyler Graham to escape the jam.

The crowd was the largest for a game at the OSU ballpark since its 1999 renovation; the previous best had been 3,068 for the second game of the 2005 NCAA Super Regionals against Southern California on June 12, 2005.

Gillespie broke the OSU single-season total base record that had been set by Jacoby Ellsbury with 142 in 2005.

Adding comments to these stories has been disabled. View the current sports stories Salem-News Sports