Coastal Carolina has spot in national championship series within reach

Gary Gilmore had said this Coastal Carolina baseball team was one of the most resilient he had ever coached, that these Chanticleers had responded back all year long after disappointments or setbacks and that he certainly believed they could do so once more.

And did they ever Thursday night.

Pushed to the brink of elimination with a loss two nights earlier, the Chants delivered a statement-making 7-5 win over Texas Tech before a crowd of 25,367 at TD Ameritrade Park as the College World Series field whittled to just four teams.

That’s right, Coastal Carolina (51-17) is one of the final four teams with a chance at the national championship and showing it’s determined to push this incredible season as far as it can go.

The Chants will get a rematch with TCU (49-16) on Friday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. They’ll need to win that one and another game with the Horned Frogs – who are 2-0 this week – on Saturday to advance to the best-of-three championship series with the winner from the other half of the bracket.

One step at a time, though.

“It’s an incredible run. Right now’s not the time to take it in,” Gilmore said afterward. “Our kids are still alive, we are in the final four – it’s an incredible moment for the kids and our program. But we don’t want to roll out there tomorrow and play like we don’t belong, so to speak. We still do belong, we’re still in this thing and, I mean, at this moment in time we’ve just got to figure out how to win tomorrow.”

After a nail-biting 2-1 win over Florida on Sunday to start this College World Series experience followed two days later by a lopsided 6-1 loss to TCU that got away from them early, the game Thursday night would be an ebb and flow of momentous breakthroughs and highwire-esque tension for the Chants.

All leading up to yet another unforgettable moment for a program making its first-ever appearance on this stage.

“We’re excited. We said earlier in the day, there’s five teams left and our goal was to get through this game and be one of the four,” senior third baseman Zach Remillard said. “So we’re here and now we have to take it a step at a time and play tomorrow.”

Senior relief pitcher Mike Morrison (8-1) threw 83 pitches out of the bullpen while going 4 1/3 innings for the win and allowing two runs near the end after giving the Chants a chance to take control of the game. Sophomore reliever Bobby Holmes allowed only a hit and a walk while holding Texas Tech (47-20) scoreless over the final 2 1/3 innings for his fourth save.

And senior catcher David Parrett played the role of offensive star on this night, going 2-for-4 with three RBIs and two stolen bases out of the nine-spot in the batting order.

“The mindset for today was it was a one-game season,” Parrett said. “That’s what it came down to today, and this group of guys, we don’t want to say goodbye to each other yet.”

Gilmore had mixed up his lineup after it produced only three total runs through those first two games this week, and it paid off in the top of the second. After Billy Cooke drew a one-out walk and stole second, Parrett – inserted in the lineup at catcher – soon roped a two-out RBI single through the left side for a 1-0 lead.

Then the tide turned suddenly and dramatically the other way

After starting the bottom of the second with a strikeout, freshman starter Jason Bilous gave up back-to-back singles to Texas Tech’s Eric Gutierrez and Hunter Hargrove. Michael Davis followed with a grounder to the left side that caromed off shortstop Michael Paez’s diving glove, but Paez steadied himself, corralled the ball and fired home to nail Gutierrez at the plate for the second out.

That wouldn’t save the Chants from the inning, however, as Bilous issued a four-pitch walk to nine-hole batter Tyler Floyd and Stephen Smith clobbered a two-out, three-run double to left-center to give the No. 5 nationally-seeded Red Raiders a 3-1 lead.

But it wouldn’t stand for long.

Coastal Carolina got a one-out single from Remillard and a double down the right field line by Connor Owings to put the pressure right back on Texas Tech in the top of the third. Red Raiders starter Erikson Lanning got G.K. Young to hit a grounder to the left side, but shortstop Orlando Garcia threw low to the plate and it got away from the catcher as Remillard scored.

Texas Tech then went to the bullpen to bring in Robert Dugger and he got Kevin Woodall Jr. to hit a slow roller between first and second. Gutierrez, the first baseman, ranged right to field it, but he and Davis at second would both miss the ball as it rolled through to the outfield for another error allowing two runs to come home this time as the Chants retook the lead, 4-3.

Again, there would be no break in the suspense.

In the bottom of that inning, Texas Tech’s Tyler Neslony doubled to right-center with one out and Gutierrez walked to force a call to the bullpen. Bilous, who gave up five hits and four walks in 2 1/3 innings, gave way to Morrison.

The senior closer has simply been outstanding this season for the Chants, and his performance in the bottom of the third perfectly encapsulated everything he has meant to the team on this special run.

He walked the first batter he faced, Hargrove, to load the bases, but he came back to strike out Davis and after falling behind 3-0 in the count to Floyd he battled back to strike him out as well.

“I was just mouthing to myself, ‘Hey, you don’t walk guys, you don’t walk guys, you don’t walk guys,’” Morrison recalled later. “I threw him a couple fastballs down the middle and he took them, and then I just reared back and let it rip and he swung and missed.”

Morrison let out a show of emotion on the mound after that sequence as the momentum certainly seemed with the Chants at that point.

And two innings later, they broke the game wide open.

Another throwing error on Garcia at shortstop – the third error of the game for Texas Tech – and back-to-back walks to Woodall and Cooke loaded the bases with one out as the Red Raiders went to their third pitcher of the game, Parker Mushinski. Tyler Chadwick delivered an RBI sacrifice fly to center and Parrett followed by roping a line-drive two-run single to left-center to make it a 7-3 game.

After hitting 10 home runs last year, Parrett has struggled all season at the plate. A former standout at Iowa Western Community College less than 10 miles down the road, he came in with a .130 batting average, nine hits and 10 RBIs before his big game Thursday night.

“This guy right here works harder than anybody on this team,” Morrison said of Parrett, unprompted in the postgame news conference. “... He brings it every day and he’s one of my best friends in the world, and I couldn’t be happier for him on this stage. We always say he rakes in the Midwest.”

Morrison, meanwhile, kept cruising along until the bottom of the seventh when he opened with a walk to Tanner Gardner, walked Neslony two batters later and gave up a single to Gutierrez to load the bases with one out. He got Hargrove out on a sac fly to left as one run came in, but Davis followed with an RBI single through the right side to cut the Chants’ lead to 7-5.

At that point, Coastal Carolina brought Bobby Holmes out of the bullpen and the sophomore – who has been terrific in the postseason – struck out pinch-hitter Ryan Long to end the inning.

“More so than not lefties have probably had better numbers off me, so I completely understood what they were doing there,” Holmes said. “The first slider I threw was awful and I knew I needed to make an adjustment, so sure enough we went three straight and the last one was probably one of the best ones I’ve thrown all year. In that moment you’ve got to stay calm. You don’t want to lose too much mental energy because you know your job’s not done for the rest of the game. So I was just trying to stay cool, but in my head I was pretty excited about it.”

Holmes faced another jam in the eighth with runners on first and second and two outs before getting Neslony to hit one back to the mound. It went off his glove, but he stayed calm, picked it up and tossed to first for the final out to protect the two-run lead at that point before pitching a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth.

And that sealed it for the Chants, who are now 4-0 against top-eight national seeds this postseason and live to play another day.

In addition to Parrett, Remillard was 2-for-5 with a run and Chadwick was 2-for-3 with an RBI after a tough start to the College World Series.

So TCU now awaits Friday night ... and possibly Saturday.

“Oh, it’s possible. How many times does a team win two games in a row? It happens,” Remillard said. “Yeah, the odds are against us, but when you take it a pitch at a time and stay with the process it’s just playing baseball and executing our game and playing hard.”

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 11:53 PM with the headline "Coastal Carolina has spot in national championship series within reach."