Xavier may not want to schedule Oregon in any sport ever again.
The Oregon Ducks baseball team began this season with a four-game sweep over the Musketeers and just ended the Nashville Regional with an 11-2 win over that same Xavier team.
Now the Ducks will come home and host Oral Roberts in their first Super Regional since 2012. The Golden Eagles were a 4-seed in the Stillwater Regional and upset Dallas Baptist 6-5 to advance. The weekend series will be a Best of 2-of-3 with the winner going on to Omaha for the College World Series.
Playing and defeating Xavier for the sixth time this season was probably the last thing on anyone’s mind when this weekend started. Vanderbilt, a national 6-seed, was the overwhelming favorite to win this regional, but the Ducks beat the Commodores Saturday night and Xavier ousted the host team 2-1 Sunday afternoon.
Although they upset Vandy, Xavier was still in a tough spot. The Musketeers had to beat the Ducks twice in order to advance.
The game was scoreless through three innings until Oregon finally got on the board in the bottom of the fourth on Sabin Ceballos’ 442-foot solo home run to left-center field that left the entire stadium.
The Ducks added to their 1-0 lead in the fifth thanks to some old-time small ball. Rikuu Nishida stole second and the ball went into center field to score Bennett Thompson.
Nishida went to third on the play and two pitches later, he scored on a balk to make it 3-0. Drew Cowley’s double to right-center scored Bryce Boettcher to increase the lead to 4-0.
Boettcher started the game in center as he replaced Colby Shade, who was hit on the wrist by a pitch Saturday night. Thankfully for the Ducks, Boettcher is as good of an outfielder as Shade, so there wasn’t any loss of defense in such a crucial spot.
Xavier managed to score an unearned run in the sixth and then the Ducks absolutely blew the door off in the bottom half with six runs to make it 10-1.
The big blow came off the wooden bat of Nishida with a bases-clearing double to extend their lead to 7-1. Just for good measure, Drew Cowley hit a three-run homer to left-center to put double digits on the scoreboard to erase any doubt.
Perhaps lost in the offensive exploits is the effort on the mound. Oregon used Grayson Grinsell, Ian Umlandt, and Logan Mercado to hold the Musketeers to just two runs, one unearned, and nine hits.
Oregon’s late-season run has been something else. This victory was the Ducks’ ninth straight and if that streak reaches 11 next weekend, they’ll be going to Omaha for the first time in the program’s history.
