Pride of Mid-Majors
OMAHA, Neb. — Coastal Carolina showed that a baseball program from a school outside the power conferences can play with the best, and be the best.
“All my brothers in arms at the mid-majors, they’ve been wearing my telephone out the whole week: `Wear the banner for us. Show us it can be done,”’ Chanticleers coach Gary Gilmore said after his team beat Arizona 4-3 in the deciding Game 3 of the College World Series finals Thursday.
Coastal Carolina won its first national championship in any sport, and it came in the Chanticleers’ 14th national tournament appearance in Gilmore’s 21 seasons at the school.
The title also was the first in a team sport in the 33-year history of the Big South Conference. The Big South could savor the accomplishment for only about eight hours. The Chanticleers became members of the Sun Belt Conference on Friday.
The Chanticleers have a .680 winning percentage since 2000, ranking among the best in the nation. They’re the first non-power conference team since Fresno State in 2008 to win the title. In the last 50 years, the only other non-power conference baseball champions are Cal State Fullerton (1979, 1995, 2004) Wichita State (1989), Pepperdine (1992) and Rice (2003).
“Me personally, I don’t think we’ve been a mid-major baseball program for a while,” Gilmore said. “I surely don’t tell that to my kids. I tell them I think we’re a top four or five ACC-caliber club, that we can play with the SEC at times, that we don’t shy away from anyone.
“We’re a mid-major because we’re a 10,000-population school and we had (FBC) football, and you kind of get stigmatized by that.”
Coastal Carolina capitalized on two errors on the same play to score four unearned runs in the sixth inning of a game delayed a day by bad weather.
It was worth the wait.
“Whenever I die, I’ll know this group of guys here, they willed themselves to be the national champion,” Gilmore said. “It was just meant to be, no doubt. If there is such a thing as a team of destiny, this group is it.”
Coastal Carolina (55-18) became the first team since Minnesota in 1956 to win the title in its first CWS appearance. Arizona (49-24) was trying for its second national title since 2012 but came up just short in a season in which it was picked to finish ninth in the Pac-12.
“Amazing season, and they’re a deserving champion,” first-year coach Jay Johnson said of the Chanticleers. “We played as good as we possibly could this year, and they’re the best team we’ve played, in my opinion.”
Andrew Beckwith (15-1), the national leader in wins, went 5 2/3 innings after pitching two complete games and picked up his third victory of the CWS. He was named the Most Outstanding Player.
“He’s been coaching for 21 years, and he deserves every bit of it,” Beckwith said of Gilmore. “We got him to Omaha and we got him a national championship. The senior class, the hard work in the fall, the dedication of the guys who don’t play much. It doesn’t go unnoticed. It was a full team effort the whole College World Series, and we got it done.”
Alex Cunningham earned his first save, striking out Ryan Haug with a full-count fastball to end the game after Arizona had pulled within one in the bottom of the ninth. When Haug swung and missed, Cunningham turned to his dugout, beat his chest with his fist three times and saluted before flipping his glove away to start the celebration.
