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OMAHA, Neb. — A shot at a championship. It’s so close. Like, as close as a tag/no tag super-slow-motion HD replay review at second base in a one-run game that has to be reviewed for five minutes. That kind of close.
For five and half days, a total of eleven Men’s College World Series games produced all the drama of a CoComelon marathon. The average margin of victory was 6.5 runs. Teams played. Teams won. Teams lost. Teams advanced. Teams went home. All wrapped up by the middle innings, game after game.
But in Wednesday night’s Game 12, a de facto national semifinal, Arkansas and Ole Miss ground it out in a 3-2 cleat-biter of a contest that was punctuated by a series of good bunts, bad bunts, web gems, timely blasts into the gap and the longest homer ever to rocket out of Charles Schwab Field. Then, in the ninth inning alone, there were strikeouts with the bases loaded, guys crashing into each other on a crucial short fly ball, a grounder in the hole that looked like a game-ender but instead drove in a run, followed by a would-be game-winning line drive that instead turned into the game-ending line-out. And oh yeah, they also had that big midgame review on the play at second.
“Well, you all have been saying we needed more drama in this series, and there you have it,” Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco said after the loss. A win would have put his team into its first College World Series finals. “I know you and baseball fans out there wanted a close one. But I think I would have rather had another one of those big margins of victory!”
“Yeah, it was plenty close,” Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn added, speaking of the Ole Miss rally that scored a run in the bottom of the ninth and ended with the bases loaded over four consecutive at-bats. “Too close for comfort.”
Finally, a close game. Now the flagship schools of two states that are so close in proximity will be in close quarters once again, playing in a Thursday Game 13 elimination contest rematch (4 p.m. ET,…
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Source : espn
