Aaron Combs of the Tennessee Volunteers delivers a pitch to the Texas A&M Aggies during game two of the Division I Men’s Baseball Championship held at Charles Schwab Field on June 23, 2024 in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
OMAHA, Neb. – You could call Saturday’s game two of the Men’s College World Series final “the Shootout at Schwab,” if only because a duel, be it a pitcher’s duel or a dispute over honor, generally has two combatants, rather than a gang on each side.
For Texas A&M and Tennessee, a gang of pitchers, five for the Aggies and four for the Vols battled it out for four hours under a blazing Omaha sun at Charles Schwab Field.
Staked to an early lead in the second at-bat of the first inning by a Jace LaViolette homer, the Aggies needed to try to make a one-run lead hold up against the stacked Tennessee offense.
The Volunteers needed to win to live and fight another day and did, but for seven innings, the 25,987 that packed the ballpark in Downtown Omaha on a day where the mercury topped 90 degrees sat on the edge of their seats, left to wonder which gang would prevail.
Aggies coach Jim Schlossnagle elected to use Zane Badmaev as an opener, even though he had thrown just 23.1 innings over 16 appearances coming into game two. Badmaev allowed a leadoff single in the first to Tennessee’s Christian Moore before inducing a fly out to left from Blake Burke and fanning Billy Amick and Dylan Dreiling. After Tennessee’s Hunter Ensley led off the second with a single, in came flamethrower Chris Cortez.
“I’m super proud of Zane. It’s not the easiest thing to go out there with a championship game,” Cortez said. “He’s an older guy. I’ve always had a hard time starting, and you know he went out there and did his thing.”
It was all part of Schlossnagle’s plan.
“We were just trying to squeeze a few outs of Zane, take off, as Chris admitted… he has some anxiety at the start of the game,” Schlossnagle said. “He’s awesome… he feels better once he can just get ready quick and jump in the game. But Zane was the best choice just to get us to maybe the first three outs. And then he did. And we were going to go one batter at a time after that.”
Cortez, MLB Pipeline’s No. 100 prospect for the upcoming MLB Draft, throws gas. He’s got a fastball that tops 100 mph, though he struggles with control. Over 4.1 innings of work, Cortez threw 99 pitches but only 55 strikes, walking five and throwing first-pitch strikes to just nine of 21 batters he faced.
Nonetheless, he held the lead.
In the other dugout, Tony Vitello took a more conventional approach, putting Drew Beam, who threw four great innings aside from the first inning ding dong by LaViolette, then handed the ball off to Aaron Combs, who threw four scoreless innings to keep the Vols in it.
“He’s very competitive. Mixed pitches well and he threw a lot of strikes. Uses defense really well,” Volunteers catcher Cal Stark said of his batterymate Combs, who earned the win. “And really just kept us in that ball game. Kept the momentum on our side for the most part.”
After quieting the Tennessee bats in game one, it looked again like the Aggies could pull off an enormous heist, using strong pitching to swipe a national championship away from a Tennessee team that hit 180 homers coming into Saturday’s game, the second most in college baseball history.
But finally, the tension broke, with Tennessee getting a two-run homer in the seventh from Dylan Dreiling and another in the eighth off nine-hole hitter Stark, both off Aggies reliever Kaiden Wilson, and holding to take home a 4-1 victory.
After Combs Allowed a single to A&M’s Ted Burton to lead off the ninth, Vitello brought Kirby Connell out of the bullpen to try to get Caden Sorrell, but Connell surrendered a single, and the Aggies had runners at first and second.
The tension began to crank up, and then Ali Camarillo hit into a fielder’s choice, giving A&M runners at the corners with one out. On came closer Nate Snead, who got the final two outs to earn a save, and the Vols survived to play game three on Monday night.
“It was an SEC war or just a postseason war,” Vitello said of the game.
What was the difference?
“They got the big swings at the right times, we battled, but I was proud of Kaden Wilson. Two pitches got him. Dreiling was on the fastball, and he hung a breaking ball to [Stark],” Schlossnagle said. “…A close ball game, just exactly what you’d expect with these two teams. To think you’re going to roll right through it in two games, that would be nice. But obviously, we get to play. We don’t have to play, we get to play the last college baseball game of the season, and that’s awesome.”
They get to play the last college baseball game – the last college game in any sport – of the 2024 season.
It’ll be much more conventional tomorrow night, with A&M putting Justin Lamkin, who’s started 15 games, out against Tennessee ace Zander Sechrist.
Starter against starter. They’ll go mano-a-mano for a National Championship. Worthy adversaries.
Two combatants. A duel, if you will.
One more game in Omaha, under the lights in the big ballpark, for all the marbles.
