Chanticleers back in position to vie for first ever College World Series berth

Six years removed from being on the cusp of a berth in the College World Series, from coming oh so close to the singular dream and driving goal with which he has built his program, Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore admits that, yeah, he wondered at times if this would ever happen again.

The further the Chanticleers got from their 2010 NCAA super regional run, the further away they seemed. If it wasn’t losing key parts to the Major League Baseball draft, it was a disproportionate and seemingly unending slew of injuries.

But every Coastal Carolina team since – for better or worse – would be compared to the standard of that 2010 team, and Gilmore couldn’t avoid revisiting the what-ifs every time he ran into a former player from that roster or glanced up at a TV and saw one of the Major Leaguers that collection of talent produced.

“Every time I see one of those guys. Every time I see my son at my house, every time I see Tommy La Stella on TV, every time I see Taylor Motter. Every time you see one of them you go, ‘Oh man, was that my only opportunity?’” Gilmore said this week. “Well, these guys have given us another one.”

And once again the dream of the program’s first College World Series berth feels within reach.

In the super regionals for the third time in program history, Coastal Carolina opens a best-of-three series with host Louisiana State at Alex Box Stadium on Saturday night with the winner heading to Omaha, Neb., after this to take its shot as one of eight teams vying for the national championship.

“All it is, is about getting to this position. Heck, at the end of the day you don’t even have to be the best team – you just have to play better than the other team twice,” Gilmore said. “Surely South Carolina won the national championship [in 2010], but I’ll never accept the fact they were better than us. They just beat us, and it was what it was. And hopefully we can turn the tables on these guys.”

Not that it needs revisiting for any Coastal Carolina fan, but those 2010 Chants lost a pair of one-run games – 4-3 and 10-9 – to the Gamecocks in Myrtle Beach. South Carolina got a three-run Christian Walker home run in the bottom of the eighth to pull out that clinching game and leave the Chants heartbroken.

But there’s no need to look back this week as the 2016 Chants (47-16) have given the program and its fans so much to look forward to after a terrific regular season, a sweep through the Big South tournament and a dramatic ninth-inning rally Monday night and into Tuesday to overcome a two-run deficit and slip past NC State in the regionals in Raleigh, N.C.

“My first couple years, the 2010 team was the standard and it was, ‘We need to get back to that standard, get back to that standard,’” senior left fielder Anthony Marks said. “We kind of fell off a little bit, and it was more just get back to winning baseball games and not compare yourself to anybody else. And I think that took a little pressure off us. We’re here to make our own team, and now we’re finally in the spot where we wanted to be, where we thought we would be and now we’re two wins away from the ultimate goal.”

Said junior designated hitter G.K. Young: “I’ve dreamed of this my whole life, honestly.”

Coastal Carolina has won 16 of its last 18 games and climbed as high as No. 11 (Collegiate Baseball) in the last available national rankings, but the Chants run into an equally hot team in LSU (45-19), which has won 17 of its last 20 and is ranked as high as No. 5 nationally.

Tigers coach Paul Mainieri confirmed Friday that he will start 6-foot-3 sophomore right-hander Alex Lange (8-3, 3.46 earned-run average and 117 strikeouts in 106 2/3 innings) in the series opener Saturday night.

The Chants will counter with junior righty Andrew Beckwith (12-1, 1.82 ERA) and a lineup that ranks second in NCAA Division I with 91 home runs.

While this is Coastal Carolina’s third-ever super regionals appearance (following 2008 and 2010), LSU has won 22 NCAA regional championships and is in its sixth super regional in Mainieri’s 10 seasons. The program has also won six national championships, most recently in 2009.

Meeting with the media Friday, though, the Tigers expressed their respect for the Chants and what they’re up against.

“Coastal Carolina is a team that can come into the SEC and compete and have success here,” LSU shortstop Kramer Robertson said. “Just because it says Coastal Carolina across their chest doesn’t mean that they’re not extremely talented and a really good team. At this point everybody still playing is a really good team so we know that we’ll have our hands full.”

Mainieri seconded that and added his own personal respect for what Gilmore has built in his two-plus decades at Coastal Carolina.

“These super regionals are obviously very intense. The goal is so close, but it’s close for them as well – not just for us. And their kids and their coaches have the same dreams and aspirations that we have,” he said. “And they’ve got an excellent baseball team and an excellent coach. Gary Gilmore is really one of the outstanding coaches in college baseball. He’s been there for 20 years, he’s got the respect of all the college baseball community.”

Gilmore’s stature in college baseball is cemented, but what he doesn’t have yet is a College World Series appearance with his alma mater.

The Chants have the chance to change that these next few days, and Gilmore knows better than anyone how special these opportunities are for a program.

“If I had a dollar for every night I woke up dreaming of getting this opportunity to show up in Omaha and take my own team there ... I probably could make several mortgage payments with the number of times I’ve thought about it in the middle of the night,” he said of being back on this stage. “So definitely, it’s a big moment for myself, for this program, for our university as well.”

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 10:39 PM with the headline "Chanticleers back in position to vie for first ever College World Series berth."