Notre Dame Baseball Will Face Mississippi State In Super Regional
Notre Dame baseball has to go through StarkVegas to get to Omaha.
The No. 10 seed Irish (33-11) will play No. 7 Mississippi State in a best-of-three super regional series, beginning Saturday. The Bulldogs (44-15) won the Starkville Regional Monday by defeating Campbell 6-5 in the title game.
The winner heads to the College World Series, which begins June 19.
Both teams went 3-0 in their respective regionals. Notre Dame outscored its opponents 50-5 and hit 15 home runs en route to its first regional title since 2002. The Irish defeated Central Michigan 10-0 Friday to open the NCAA tournament, dusted UConn 26-3 Saturday and beat the Chippewas again Sunday 14-2 in the final.
"That's us clicking on all cylinders," Notre Dame head coach Link Jarrett said. "How often can you do that three days in a row? It's rare in our sport and those are championship teams. Each one of those teams in this tournament knows what they're doing. Well-coached, has a personality, good personnel, they're in for a reason.”
The 26 runs scored Saturday were the most in team history in an NCAA tournament game. First baseman Niko Kavadas, a first-team All-ACC selection, was the regional’s most outstanding player. He went 6 for 10 with five home runs, 13 RBI and six walks.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame’s three starting pitchers combined to throw 24 innings and allowed just four runs.
Mississippi State defeated Samford 8-4 in its tournament opener and beat VCU 16-4 Saturday. Monday’s win clinched the program’s fifth straight super regional appearance.
The Bulldogs went 20-10 in SEC games and finished second in the West Division behind No. 1 overall seed Arkansas. They are the only Division I team to reach the last five super regionals. Entering Monday’s regional final, they had a 3.85 earned run average (fourth in the SEC) and were hitting .282 (third).
As the higher seed, Mississippi State earned the chance to host the super regional. Its home venue, Dudy Noble Field, is well-known as one of college baseball’s wildest atmospheres. It holds the NCAA on-campus attendance record for a college baseball game (15,586 fans).
“You’ll be dealing with 10,000 people who eat, sleep and breathe this,” Jarrett said. “Every spot in the outfield, they’ll be hanging over with grills and yelling and screaming. They love their baseball.”
Notre Dame, though, still feels it deserved a top-eight seed that would have allowed Frank Eck Stadium to host a super regional.
“We feel like this next weekend should be at home too,” Kavadas said. “That’s something we’re going to play with that will light a fire underneath us. We’re going to go into Mississippi State and find a way to go 2-0.”
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