CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—For seven innings, it didn’t look like Arizona’s day.
The Wildcats couldn’t solve North Carolina freshman Ryan Lynch, who had allowed only two hits and three baserunners, and one mistake from their first-year pitcher was looking like it would be the difference.
Then, fate intervened. It knew about the every-four-tourneys trend and wasn’t about to let that come to an end.
Arizona (44-19) scored three runs in the top of the 8th to win 4-3 at North Carolina on Sunday afternoon at Boshamer Stadium, taking the best-of-3 Super Regional series 2-1. The win clinched the program’s 19th trip to the College World Series, first under coach Chip Hale, and continued a pattern of going to Omaha every fourth NCAA Baseball Tournament since moving off campus to Hi Corbett Field.
The UA won the school’s fourth national title in 2012, reached the championship series in 2016 and also made it in 2021 but went 0-2.
It will be an infamous foe that the Wildcats open the CWS with, as they’ll face Coastal Carolina on Friday at Charles Schwab Field Omaha (time and TV TBD). The Chanticleers (53-11) are back in the Series for the first time since 2016 when they beat Arizona in three games in the championship series and they sport the nation’s longest active win streak at 23 games.
“I feel like it’s destined, like it was in the script,” Mason White said.
It was White’s 2-run single that put Arizona ahead 4-3 in the 8th, the junior shortstop—who was Hale’s first commit after getting hired in July 2021—poking it up the middle against the shift. The winning run was scored by TJ Adams, White’s roommate on the road and the mastermind behind the pregame ritual in which a toy is presented as a prize for the player of the game.
On Sunday it was a lime green remote-controlled truck, which rolled into the huddle out in right field before first pitch.
Arizona jumped out to a 1-0 lead, which it did in each game of the Super Regional, on a 2-out solo home run by Garen Caulfield in the 2nd. Caulfield was playing in his 229th game for the Wildcats, third-most in school history.
That lead lasted just over an inning, as in the bottom of the 3rd UNC (46-15) started to get to Smith Bailey. The freshman right-hander, who also started Arizona’s wins over TCU in the Big 12 Tournament title game and Cal Poly in the Eugene Regional final, worked out of a jam in the 2nd with a double play ball but then allowed back-to-back one-out singles in the 3rd.
Bailey got ahead of Jackson Van De Brake 1-2 but then left a change-up too much in the sound and paid for it, as Van De Brake crushed a 3-run homer to left.
“On that home run I just didn’t execute the change up, and I knew if I got that little bit lower it would have been a swing and miss,” said Bailey, who went six innings for his third quality start in the last four outings, including wins in the Big 12 Tournament title game and Eugene Regional final. “The whole goal of the day was just execute my pitches.”
Given a lead, Lynch became almost untouchable. He retired 16 of 18 Wildcats after Caulfield’s homer and was at 82 pitches going into the 8th. But that’s when the game turned into a PG version of a scene from Final Destination.
Andrew Cain led off with a single through the right side, only Arizona’s third hit, but then Tommy Splaine hit a grounder to Van De Brake at 2nd that should have began a textbook double play. Instead Van De Brake booted the ball and both Wildcats were safe.
“It’s a crack to get through and we did it,” Hale said. “But I feel real bad. I’ve been in that situation before. I’ve had it in pro where we lost playoff games that way. It’s not a good feeling, but you have to take advantage of mistakes. Early, middle of the year, we did a lot of swinging and missing on that pitch, so at least we made them have to make the play.”
UNC changed pitchers, bringing in another freshman, Walker McDuffie, against whom Arizona rallied in the 7th to win on Saturday. Easton Breyfogle laid down a great sacrifice bunt up the third base line and the throw caused 6-foot-3, 241-pound Tar Heels first baseman Hunter Stokely to lunge into foul territory and collide with Breyfogle.
Cain scored on the play, and Breyfogle had to come out of the game with Adams replacing him. Brendan Summerhill followed with a walk to load the bases, and Arizona came up short on its first attempt to tie or take the lead when Aaron Walton was jammed into a weak infield fly.
The Heels changed pitchers again, bringing in another arm used in Saturday’s 10-8 UA victory, for White. After swinging wildly at a ball in the dirt and then taking one outside, White sliced a hard grounder to the right of second base to score Splaine and Adams.
“I was just trying to put a ball in play, specifically in the air just to get a guy in and tie the game,” White said. “They’d been shifting me the whole weekend, so I knew just stay in the middle of the field. He gave me a good pitch, the pitch I swung at before was a really good change up in the dirt. So I put that in the back of my mind and I just got a pitch up and swung.”
After Bailey went six, nearly tripling the innings thrown by Arizona’s first two starting pitchers in the series. Julian Tonghini followed with a scoreless and ended up earning the win. Once the Wildcats were in the lead, pitching coach Kevin Vance turned to a pair of junior relievers who both threw 50-plus pitches on Saturday.
Casey Hintz, who allowed a 3-run homer that gave UNC its final lead in Game 2, walked the leadoff man and another with two outs but held the lead for Tony Pluta, who in the 9th went 1-2-3 with an Omaha-clinching strikeout of Carter French.
It was the 14th save for Pluta, setting the single-season school record. He has not allowed a run since April 1 and improved the UA’s record in 1-run games to 12-1 while extending their streak of wins when leading after eight innings to 45 (38-0 this season).
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