Here’s how NC State moved to within one win of the College World Series final
Vanderbilt’s Jack Leiter had the big arm and the big-league lineage, but Sam Highfill and N.C. State had all the answers to post a monumental College World Series win Monday night.
Highfill threw 7⅓ scoreless innings and Terrell Tatum gave the Wolfpack the only run it needed with a fifth-inning home run as N.C. State beat the Commodores 1-0 at TD Ameritrade Park.
“I knew I was going to have to go out and be good,” Highfill said. “And Tatum hit the home run and I guess that was all we needed.”
The win gives the Wolfpack (37-18) three days off from games and puts it one win from the College World Series championship series.
The No. 4 national seed and reigning College World Series champion from 2019, Vanderbilt (46-16) now faces an elimination game with Stanford Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Stanford stayed alive in the tournament by pounding Arizona, 14-5, earlier Monday.
The Vanderbilt-Stanford winner will play N.C. State on Friday at 2 p.m. and will need to beat the Wolfpack twice to reach the best-of-three national championship series.
The son of 19-year Major League Baseball veteran pitcher Al Leiter, Jack Leiter (10-4) struck out 15 Wolfpack batters over his eight innings of work. Tatum’s home run accounted for the only run he allowed.
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But Highfill (9-2), a freshman right-hander from Apex High School, topped that performance. He struck out seven over his 7 ⅓ innings while allowing just two hits and two walks.
“Jack Leiter was really, really good tonight,” N.C. State coach Elliott Avent said. “Obviously he’s one of the top pitchers in the country. I’m sure he’s going to be one of the top few picks in the MLB draft coming up. And he could tell that he was really on tonight and was really — and we weren’t going to get anything. So for Sam to keep this offense at Vanderbilt at bay to allow us a chance, it was like just unbelievable what he did tonight.”
The Commodores got their lead-off man on base in just two of eight innings against Highfill.
“That’s huge,” Highfill said. “That’s what we try to do. It’s a big thing. You get the lead-off guy, you’re in a good position for the rest of the inning. It’s certainly not over after you get the lead-off guy out. It helps a lot to not be pitching all inning from the stretch.
Vanderbilt didn’t manage to get a runner in scoring position against him until the eighth inning.
But that’s when lefty relief ace Evan Justice replaced him. With the tying run on second base, the junior got Jayson Gonzalez to ground out to second before lead-off man Enrique Bradfield, Jr., struck out looking.
In the ninth inning, Justice issued a lead-off walk to Carter Young. But Dominic Keegan hit into a double play and pinch-hitter Tate Kolwyck struck out to secure the Wolfpack win and put N.C. State three wins from a national championship.
Leiter held the Wolfpack hitless over the first four innings. Only one NC State batter managed to hit a fair ball out of the infield as Leiter struck out nine of the first 12 batters he faced, starting with 0-2 counts on seven of the first 11.
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But Tatum picked on a belt-high fastball on the inside part of the plate to change the game’s mood with a long home run to right field. With that blast, Leiter’s perfect game, no-hitter and shut out were gone and NC State had a 1-0 lead.
Noticing that Leiter had thrown him tough breaking balls in his first at-bat and started him with one in the fifth inning, Tatum said he guessed fastball on the pitch he hit out and the gamble paid off.
“ I realized that I hadn’t seen many fastballs at all,” Tatum said. “I was really hoping that he would start me off with one. But it ended up being a slider. So I took it. And then I just had this feeling that it was going to be a fastball, and I didn’t care where it was thrown, I was going for it.”
Up 1-0 in the bottom of the seventh, N.C. State loaded the bases with one out as Tyler McDonough singled, Tatum drew a walk and Jose Torres legged out a slow roller to third base for an infield single.
But Leiter locked down to strike out Luca Tresh with a 96 mph fastball on his 103rd pitch of the game. Devonte Brown couldn’t catch up with another 96 mph fastball and became Leiter’s 14th strikeout victim on his 109th pitch.
The bottom of Vanderbilt’s batting order mounted the eighth-inning rally that drove Highfill from the game. Highfill walked CJ Rodriguez to start the inning and a sacrifice bunt moved him to second before Justice escaped damage to keep Vanderbilt scoreless.
Now the Wolfpack is part of the sport’s final four teams and a national championship is within reach.
“For me, I’m really at a loss for words, honestly,” Tatum said. “From the start that we had and where we’ve been, I would say, like, this is — we’re really on top of the world right now. This feeling is unmatched, especially to do it here at this stage is one of the greatest feelings I probably ever felt in my life.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2021 at 9:37 PM.