Owls advance to NCAA Super Regionals

Jordan Stephens named regional MVP; Rice to play best-of-three series against NC State starting Friday in Raleigh

Facing possible elimination in a one-game championship final, the Rice baseball team came up with one of its best performances of the year Monday night to defeat No. 9-ranked Oregon 11-4 and claim the NCAA tournament’s Eugene Regional title and advance to the super regional round of 16.

Rice responded to Sunday night’s 11-0 shutout by Oregon to explode for 11 runs on 15 hits in the winner-take-all showdown. As a result, head coach Wayne Graham and the Owls are now 44-18 overall and advance to the super regionals for the 10th time since the NCAA adopted the current format in 1999. The blue and gray next meet Atlantic Coast Conference power N.C. State at 3 p.m. Central time June 7. The winner of the best-of-three super regional series will advance to Omaha to compete in the College World Series.

“Obviously I’m very proud of my team,” Graham said. “I thought we had more quality at-bats tonight probably than we’ve had all year. The guys were bearing down hard and came to work.”

Prior to the game, Graham made a series of moves to keep the team’s season alive, and all of them seemed to come up big. Rice career-saves leader Zech Lemond and Friday night starter Austin Kubitza switched their more familiar roles for the first time all season. Lemond started the game and tied a careerlong 6.2 innings. Kubitza came in for relief duty and threw for the final 2.1 scoreless frames to keep the Ducks in check.

Graham congratulates Lemond on a job well done

“I didn’t know the starter until he announced it this morning (game day) in the meeting,” Lemond said. “It caught me off guard, but we just went for it after that.

“The momentum swinger was big time with the first three runs (in the first inning); it just set the tone for the whole game. The hitters just continued it on throughout the whole game. They let the whole pitching staff work easy,” he said.

After the game, Graham discussed the reason behind switching Lemond’s and Kubitza’s roles.

“We thought we needed to switch roles because he (Lemond) had not thrown that many pitches and Kubitza had thrown more,” Graham said. “Kubitza wanted the start, but we felt like Kubitza is going to have a long career, and we didn’t feel like it would be right to put him in a position where he had to throw that many pitches.”

An in-game injury to regular starting catcher Geoff Perrott on Sunday forced Graham to start true freshman Hunter Kopycinski behind the plate Monday. Kopycinski, who made just his sixth career start and first since April 9, went four for five at the plate, including four  RBIs and a triple to the wall in center field.

“It’s a cloud-nine feeling right now,” Kopycinski said. “But we have to sleep it off tonight and get right back to work tomorrow.”

“We know he (Kopycinski) has phenomenal ability and has a great future in the game,” Graham said. “He’s been playing behind a senior catcher, and he’s always been capable of doing a lot of great work. Sometimes something like that has to happen – you have to catch a break – to move forward in a college season. Certainly those four hits and his defensive skills were a break tonight.”

Eight different Owls in the lineup had a base hit, and each of the first seven batters in the order scored at least one run. Rice got off to a hot start in the top of the first inning. Christian Stringer doubled down the right field line, and Keenan Cook walked. Shane Hoelscher followed with a long blast over the center fielder’s head to the deepest part of Oregon’s PK Park. Stringer and Cook scored easily as Hoelscher hustled to third, but the Ducks’ fielding error on the play allowed Hoelscher to pick up the final 90 feet and score for a quick 3-0 lead.

Rice’s defense in the bottom of the frame, however, was not its best, and Oregon was able to cut the lead to one. The Owls failed to catch a high infield pop-up that crossed over from sharp sunlight to the stadium’s shadows creeping diagonally across the infield. The Ducks’ base runner went on to score, and Oregon soon added another run when Rice had trouble solving a rundown on a grounder to the right side of the infield with base runners on first and second.

It was still 3-2 at that point with a lot of baseball left to play, but the Owls came right back with two runs on a pair of hits in the second, followed by another two runs on three hits in the third. Oregon fought back for a run in the bottom of the third to make the score 7-3, but Lemond found his groove after that. The sophomore right-hander from Houston retired 10 of 11 with four strikeouts during the middle three innings. In the Rice fifth, Kopycinski singled home fellow freshman Leon Byrd to extend the lead 8-4.

Lemond worked into the seventh inning, when Oregon rallied for its final run of the night on an RBI single by Tyler Baumgartner. Rice made the move to Kubitza out of the bullpen, which effectively ended the threat. The only scoring left was done by the Owls, who capped off the top of the ninth inning with three final runs in an 11-4 victory.

Rice tallied double-digit hits for the 28th time this season. Oregon had nine hits overall. The Ducks’ season came to an end at 48-16.

The Owls were well-represented on the All-Regional team as selected by attending members of the media. The blue and gray led the way with five honorees, including sophomore pitcher Jordan Stephens as the most valuable player. Stephens fired a two-hit shutout at the Ducks Saturday night that sent Rice to the winner’s bracket.

The All-NCAA Eugene Regional honorees included:

C Reid Clary, South Dakota State
1B Ryon Healy, Oregon
2B Christian Stringer, Rice
SS Ford Stainbach, Rice
3B Shane Hoelscher, Rice
OF Tyler Baumgartner, Oregon
OF Leon Byrd, Rice
OF Justin Maffei, San Francisco
UT Scott Heineman, Oregon
P Cole Irvin, Oregon
P Jordan Stephens, Rice

MVP Jordan Stephens, Rice