FSU holds off Charleston’s charge; Coastal wins, avoids elimination
Quincy Nieporte broke a tie with his eighth-inning homer, and top-seeded Florida State beat College of Charleston 3-2 on Saturday in a NCAA Baseball Tournament winner’s bracket game.
Carl Wise’s two-run homer in the top half of the eighth tied the game and chased Florida State starter Boomer Biegalski, who scattered three hits over the first seven innings and struck out eight. A two-out double by Alex Pastorious preceded Wise’s homer.
Dylan Silva (7-1) needed two pitches to get out of the eighth, and Billy Strode pitched a perfect ninth for his 14th save.
Brandon Glazer (10-2) went the distance for the Cougars (44-14).
Florida State scored twice in the fifth on RBI singles by Josh Delph and D.J. Stewart.
Florida State (43-19) awaits the winner of Sunday’s elimination game between third-seeded Auburn and the second-seeded Cougars. Either would need to win to win three straight games to advance to next week’s Super Regionals.
Auburn eliminated Mercer 1-0 in Saturday’s first game. All four tournament games have been decided by one run.
COASTAL CAROLINA 4, TEXAS SOUTHERN 1 At College Station, with No. 2-seeded Coastal Carolina facing a regional elimination game against fourth-seeded Texas Southern, sophomore right-hander Andrew Beckwith threw a career-high 81/3 innings while allowing seven hits and one run to lead the Chanticleers to victory at Texas A&M’s Blue Bell Park.
That buys the Chants (39-20) another day in the four-team, double-elimination regional – they’ll play Sunday at 1 p.m. against the loser of top-seeded Texas A&M’s game with No. 3 California on Saturday night – and gives Coastal coach Gary Gilmore something to think about as to Beckwith’s future role on the pitching staff.
“He just keeps getting better for a guy we recruited to be a guy that comes in behind some power (arms) to be a change-of-pace guy. He’s really evolved into a tremendous pitcher for us,” Gilmore said. “... We needed that performance today. That was huge.”
Beckwith improved to 6-4 with the win and lowered his ERA to 3.26 while Felix Gomez (4-3) took the loss for Texas Southern, which ends its season.
Sophomore G.K. Young was 2-for-4 to lead the Chants while Anthony Marks, Michael Paez, Tyler Chadwick and Jack Curtis each had a hit and an RBI.
Coastal Carolina was more effective at the plate after managing four hits in Friday’s opening loss to California.
“Our mindset today was just to be aggressive, and hopefully it would work out – and it did,” Paez said.
The Chants still have a lot of work to do, though.
To make it out of the regional and into the Super Regionals, Coastal Carolina needs to win two games Sunday – one against the losing team from Saturday night and one against the remaining undefeated team – to force a winner-take-all game Monday.
“If we play and pitch and do things we’re capable of, we’ll compete with whoever it is we face tomorrow. It’s not a big deal,” Gilmore said.
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