OMAHA, Neb. – With his Louisville Cardinals down 3-1 in the sixth, they’d been unable to scratch out much offense against Arizona starter Smith Bailey, and Cardinals head coach Dan McDonnell was frustrated.
He called the team together in the third base dugout at Charles Schwab Field and gave them what could be charitably described as an animated pep talk. The Cardinals responded, getting a run in the seventh and then breaking the game open in the eighth, scoring six runs as the pendulum of momentum and luck swung back to the Cardinals, defeating Arizona 8-3 and avoiding elimination. They’ll face the winner of Sunday night’s game between Coastal Carolina and Oregon State at 2 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
For the first six innings, the Wildcats, largely, were in control, behind stellar pitching from Bailey, who was pitching in his fourth straight game where Arizona faced elimination.
The offense gave Bailey a lead in the second inning. With Aaron Walton on second and Mason White on first, Adonys Guzman singled to left to score Walton, but White took a big turn around second and was caught in a rundown. The baserunning error cost the Wildcats a run, as Maddox Mihalkis followed with a single, and Garen Caulfield then hit a single through the right side to score Guzman and give the Wildcats a 2-0 lead.
In the bottom of the second, the Cardinals cut into the lead when Jake Munroe scored on a fielder’s choice on Zion Rose’s ground ball to shortstop.
With two outs in the top of the third, Adonys Guzman teed off on the 2-2 offering from Ethan Eberle and put it into the seats behind the left field bullpen to make it 3-1 Arizona. From there, Bailey kept the Louisville offense stifled for three more innings, as the Cardinals stranded four runners in scoring position through the first six innings.
For his part, Bailey went about his business as he had in his three previous elimination game starts — one in the Big 12 championship game, one in the Eugene regional, and one in the Chapel Hill super regional.
“I felt the same as every other outing just because I did everything the same,” Bailey said. “I just tried to execute my pitches and keep my composure with any hits or anything that happened that day go our way.”
By the sixth, Louisville was running out of innings, and McDonnell needed to fire up his team.
“As a coach my age, I grew up watching and admiring the Krzyzewski’s and the Saban’s and the Parcells. I definitely have a little bit of old school in me,” McDonnell said of his animated speech. “I love on the kids… I had a lot of frustration in me just from what I was watching. I was waiting for the adjustment to happen. It wasn’t happening. So, you know, I just kinda used a ‘groundhog’ comparison as to what was happening. And as good as we are in the ninth, and as good we are in the last few innings, we’re not waiting.”
In the bottom of the seventh, Garret Pike led off four Louisville with a double. Kamau Neighbors followed with a perfect bunt single down the first base line that advanced Pike to third. That chased Arizona starter Smith Bailey from the game after six innings and two batters, with Garrett Hicks coming in for his second appearance in as many games in Omaha. Hicks induced a foul pop to third base, and Neighbors advanced to second. Lucas Moore’s sacrifice fly to center scored Pike to cut the lead to 3-2.
Hicks was lifted in the eighth after Jake Munroe reached on an errant throw by Arizona shortstop Mason White and a single by Eddie King Jr., with Tony Pluta coming in for a potential six-out save. But Pluta issued a single to Tague Davis to load the bases with no outs, and then Zion Rose hit a bloop single that dropped in fair territory for a single, scoring Munroe and King and giving Louisville a 4-3 lead. Rose stole second and then scored on Kamau Neighbors’ single, giving the Cardinals a two-run cushion.
“Jake, with a hard ground ball, running it out. Eddie, who’s been hot all playoff, getting the base hit. And then Tay, a bloop shot, me,” Rose said. “And it’s funny how baseball is, everybody’s hitting hard line guys in the center, but they’re getting caught, but the little bloop hit gets down.”
Alex Alicea missed a bunt sign, and as Pike broke for the plate, he was caught in a rundown while Neighbors advanced to third behind the play. When the ball got to pitcher Tony Pluta covering the plate, it fell out of his glove as he applied the tag, and Pike was safe, and Neighbors was on third. Alicea then bunted back to the mound with Neighbors running with the pitch, scoring on the sacrifice to make it 7-3. Lucas Moore then singled to center, stole second, and scored on Matt Klein’s single to left, making it 8-3.
Pluta had made two appearances in the Chapel Hill super regional, throwing 64 pitches, and perhaps the added workload last weekend led to his two rough outings in Omaha.
“Maybe the 60-some pitches last weekend, it’s tough on a body, it’s a lot of pitches for him. So he definitely was not as sharp as he has been,” said Arizona head coach Chip Hale of Pluta, who recorded 14 saves and had a 3-0 record in relief this season. “I know those are some bloop hits and all that, but he gets a lot more swing and miss than that. So hey, it’s college baseball, it’s a sport, and the ball bounces, monkey wins. So we have to live with it. We got some great breaks along the way, too.”
Hale and the Wildcats have been eliminated from the College World Series in two games before, perhaps most notably in 1985 when Hale was a sophomore infielder.
“Obviously, we didn’t like ’85, it was tough. Kind of same deal. We lost a really close game and then we didn’t play very well against Stanford. So yeah, let’s get back here and see if we can repeat what we did in ’86 in 2026,” Hale said.
In 1986, the Wildcats returned to Omaha and won the national championship.
Photo: Kamau Neighbors of Louisville reacts after bunting for a single in the Cardinals’ 8-3 win over Arizona at the College World Series on Sunday. (Photo: Taris Smith/Louisville Athletics)
