With a win Sunday night over North Carolina in Game-Two of the College World Series, the Oregon State Beavers will become the first back-to-back national champions of college baseball since LSU accomplished the feat in 1996-97.
Oddsmakers at most online sportsbooks favor Oregon State to repeat in its championship quest with a -125 money line chalk . Backers of the Tar Heels will be getting -105 ml juice.
Freshman Jorge Reyes led Oregon State to within one win of its second straight College World Series title with another strong pitching performance and the Beavers beat North Carolina 11-4 in Game-One on Saturday night. North Carolina, which won three straight elimination games to set up a rematch of last year's championship series, needs to win twice more to keep Oregon State from winning the title.
“We were beaten by a much better team tonight,” North Carolina coach Mike Fox said. “That’s all I’ve got to say. Every phase of the game they did a lot better than we did. I thought their hitters looked a lot more locked in; especially early in the game than ours did. I think that’s probably pretty typical of how Oregon State’s won a lot of games.”
Oregon State jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second inning on a Jordan Lennerton home run into a stiff Nebraska wind. The Beavers added runs in the third and fifth innings and tacked on two more in the sixth before breaking the game open with a four run seventh aided by back to back throwing errors by Tar Heels’ reliever Tyler Trice.
“We got a tremendous start out of Jorge Reyes, a freshman out there,” OSU coach Pat Casey said. “I thought when Lenny hit the ball out, it kind of took a little pressure off him, but he was lights out, and we defended for him.”
Game-Two will be televised on ESPN2 with first pitch at 7:00 p.m. ET.
