Vanderbilt broke up a pitcher party Monday night to top Virginia 5-1 in the College World Series Finals. The teams battled to a scoreless tie through the first five innings behind Vandy’s Carson Fulmer and UVa’s Connor Jones, but the Commodores pieced together two scoring innings to get the victory.
The best-of-three title series resumes Tuesday night at 8 p.m. in Omaha and will be televised again by ESPN.
“From their standpoint, Carson Fulmer certainly was tremendous,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “He pitched the bottom of the zone, did a nice job of changing speeds when we did get a chance to get a few guys on, just didn’t allow us to get that big hit and certainly he’s worthy of all the accolades that he’s received and he’s a tremendous competitor. But I’m proud of our guys. We’ve been in this situation before this year. Certainly we were in this situation going into Saturday against Florida, that if you win, you get to continue your season on, if you don’t, it’s over. So this team has handled that kind of adversity all year long, and I would imagine [Tuesday] night would be no different.”
The pitcher’s duel started to unravel for Virginia in the sixth inning. With two outs already in the book, Zander Wiel dribbled a slow roller down the third base line and beat out a tough play for UVa’s Kenny Towns. Jones walked the next batter Bryan Reynolds on four straight pitches. That brought Will Toffey to the plate and he delivered with two RBIs on a double to left field.
The 2-0 lead didn’t send Jones to the dugout yet, but when he returned for the seventh inning, he allowed two singles among the first three batters. That made it 3-0 and the Cavaliers turned to Kevin Doherty, who got an out to start his relief appearance. Vandy shortstop Dansby Swanson, however, capitalized with two outs with a double to score a run and he eventually crossed home plate as well when Reynolds singled to right center to make it 5-0.
Jones pitched 6.1 innings and allowed four runs on seven hits. He had six strikeouts and two walks. It marked his first loss since April 11 at Georgia Tech.
“That was certainly a great ballgame there,” O’Connor said. “For the first six innings it certainly was a pitchers’ duel – Connor and Carson really were buckling down and making a lot of big pitches. I was really proud there of Connor, and I thought he really battled and gave it his best out there and gave us a chance. Certainly there in the sixth and seventh inning, Vanderbilt was able to punch a few through and open the game up a little bit.”
Virginia couldn’t overcome the 5-0 deficit, though it managed to avoid the shutout when it scored a run in the top of the ninth inning. Vanderbilt’s bullpen had yet to allow a run in the NCAA Tournament before pinch hitter Jack Gerstenmaier made the final 5-1 with an RBI hit.
The story before that, of course, was Fulmer. The SEC Pitcher of the Year pitched 7.2 innings and logged eight strikeouts to pick up the victory. That’s Fulmer’s 14th win of the season, which matched a school record and leads the nation. UVa had some opportunities to break up the strong pitching performance, but stranded two runners in the third and fifth innings, each time with one out. In the eighth inning, the Cavaliers again had two runners on base – this time with two outs – to end Fulmer’s outing, but they could not come through with a key hit.
The Hoos, in fact, came up with just two hits against Fulmer all night.
“I’m impressed,” O’Connor said. “I saw Carson pitch in high school and he’s continued to develop. I like his competitive spirit. Certainly, he’s going to come at you and give it his best. He’s aggressive. He’s certainly proven that he can make big pitches. You can see why he’s won 13 or 14 ball games and you can see why he’s had success here in Omaha last year and had success this year.”
“He did a great job of starting off with the breaking ball for a strike,” Doherty said. “To me, he started me off with fastballs, which I knew just to get right after him if I was going to see fastballs in the zone but through Kenny [Towns] and the middle of our lineup, he did a phenomenal job of getting ahead with the breaking ball and then working in from there. But he did a great job with all of his pitches.”
The loss sets up an elimination game scenario for Virginia with a tough pitching situation in place. Jones and Brandon Waddell, the team’s top two starters this postseason, are not available after starting games Saturday and Monday. Nathan Kirby, the Friday night starter before an April injury, returned from a two-month layoff Friday for a short stint against Florida but O’Connor indicated that he was “probably not” an option. Pitcher Josh Sborz threw four innings Saturday as well, but should be available in some sort of role, though likely not as the starter.
O’Connor said UVa has not made a decision yet on who to start, but the coaching staff knew coming into the final series that it would have to piece together the pitching plan for at least one game.
“I don’t know yet. Coach [Karl] Kuhn and I will certainly talk this evening and decide what the right thing to do is,” O’Connor said. “We’ve got some good options and we’re certainly going to need to piece it together. We knew that coming into this three-game series that this was going to be the case. … I don’t anticipate [Sborz] being an option to start. I think it will be somewhat limited with him tomorrow.”
