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Roundup: Sarver silences Gamecocks
By The Associated Press
Thursday's CWS Action
Fullerton 4,
South Carolina 0
< View Linescore >
OMAHA Vagabond pitcher Scott
Sarver looked right at home in Cal State Fullerton's most important game of
the season.
Sarver pitched five-hit ball
over six-plus innings and Jason Windsor finished to lead the Titans to the
College World Series championship round with a 4-0 victory Thursday night
over South Carolina.
The Titans (45-22) will face
top-seeded Texas (58-13) in the best-of-three finals beginning Saturday.
Sarver, pitching for his third
college in three years, was brilliant in only his second start of the
season. Sarver (3-2) struck out seven and walked two before Windsor came on
to close out the Gamecocks and send Fullerton to the finals for the first
time since the 1995 team won the championship.
"What a wonderful experience
for me and for our team," Sarver said. "My goal was to give our team a
chance to win and try and go deep into the game so we didn't have to burn
Windsor too much for the Texas series. I know he's a horse, and I'm sure
he'll be ready to go."
The Gamecocks already knew
what Windsor could do. He shut them out 2-0 on a three-hitter in the first
round of the CWS.
South Carolina coach Ray
Tanner said he thought he had a good scouting report on Sarver, but the
junior left-hander stymied an offense that had generated 35 runs in the
Gamecocks' last three games.
"Sarver, he didn't have a
whole lot of innings and he wasn't a highly touted guy, but any time a
pitcher is on, it can change a game, and he obviously had his stuff
tonight," South Carolina catcher Landon Powell said.
Windsor, who earned his first
career save, limited the Gamecocks to three hits and struck out the side in
the ninth.
Fullerton became the first
team since Pepperdine in 1992 to record two shutouts in the same Series and
the first team since California in 1957 to shut out the same opponent twice.
The Gamecocks became the first
team to be shut out twice in the same CWS since Fullerton in 1982.
"Not in our wildest dreams did
we think we'd have a shutout against a great South Carolina ballclub, a team
that has been swinging the bats extremely well," Fullerton coach George
Horton said. "He (Sarver) looked like an All-American pitcher."
South Carolina forced
Thursday's elimination game by beating the Titans 5-3 Wednesday.
"Tonight's game mirrored the
first game against Fullerton on Saturday in so many ways," Gamecocks coach
Ray Tanner said. "I thought Sarver came up with a tremendous start. He gave
those guys a chance to win this game. Then they got to Windsor, and he was
outstanding as usual."
The Titans led 3-0 in the
fourth against Matt Campbell (10-6) on Felipe Garcia's double and singles by
Bobby Andrews and Neil Walton.
They added a run when Ronnie
Prettyman hit Campbell's first pitch of the seventh over the right-field
wall for his third homer of the year.
The Gamecocks' first two
batters reached base in the seventh and eighth innings, but they couldn't
break through against Windsor. In the eighth, Michael Campbell lined a
two-out single into the outfield, but Andrews, the Fullerton right fielder,
threw out Steve Pearce at the plate to preserve the shutout.
"Any time we got guys in
clutch situations, they would bear down and get the outs," Powell said. "We
had first and second and nobody out, and nothing to show for it."
The finals will pit Texas
coach Augie Garrido against his old team and former top assistant in Horton.
Garrido won 931 games and
three national championships in two stints totaling 21 seasons at Fullerton.
Since taking over at Fullerton
after Garrido left eight years ago, Horton has guided the Titans to four
College World Series.
Horton's team was on the brink
of reaching last year's championship round after a 2-0 start in the CWS, but
the Titans were eliminated by two losses to Stanford.
"I'm awful excited, obviously,
because this is the first time a George Horton-led Titan team got into the
championship series," Horton said. "I'm so proud of these guys, I can't
believe it."
|
LINESCORE:
Cal State Fullerton 000 300 100 - 4 7 0
South Carolina 000 000 000 - 0 8 0
Batteries:
CSF: Sarver, Windsor (7) and Suzuki.
USC: Campbell, McCamie (7), Hempy (9) and Powell.
W - Sarver 3-2. L - Campbell 10-6. S
Windsor (1).
Home Runs: Cal State Fullerton,
Prettyman (3). |
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:37:37 AM
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