Notre Dame's Link Jarrett shares emotions following stunning win over top-ranked Tennessee Volunteers

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish stunned the top-ranked Tennessee Volunteers in the Knoxville Super Regional on Sunday afternoon, winning Game 3 of the series 7-3. In doing so, the Fighting Irish punched their tickets to the Men’s College World Series and the highly emotional victory will surely go down as the biggest moment in Notre Dame baseball history. Following the historic win on Sunday, Fighting Irish skipper Link Jarrett shared his feelings with the ESPN broadcast team, visibly tearing up while doing so.

“The poise. The toughness of this group. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve battled and fought for years to get to this moment. And just to watch the performance and the execution. And we didn’t play a complete game today by any stretch,” Jarrett said.

“Our base running, the sliding, to think of all the things that would come up to bite you multiple times, it was the sliding. I just can’t tell you enough how special these guys are. Those are just exceptional human beings. They grasp what’s going on in the competition. They go do it. And to think this moment would be with a freshman finishing the most critical games, quite frankly, in the history of the program in this venue against that team. I could go on and on. They’re just remarkable and can play. But they take care of the details and I’ve never watched anything like that,” Jarrett said.

One of the keys that Jarrett talked about after the game was that Notre Dame wanted to keep Tennessee in the single digits. “Well you know, they run off of momentum that they generate and when you give them extra opportunities, it fuels their fire. And when you’re at home, you have the fans that add to that emotion…” the Notre Dame head man said.

The Fighting Irish were trailing 3-1, when the magic happened in the top of the 7th inning. Notre Dame catcher David LaManna drilled a pivotal two-run blast to tie the game up 3-3. Then Jack Brannigan belted a solo shot to deep left center field, giving the Irish a 4-3 lead that they would not relinquish the rest of the afternoon. The back-to-back home runs silenced the Volunteer crowd in Knoxville and were a critical turning point in Sunday’s historic win.

In the top of the 8th inning, Notre Dame would pile on three more runs. Carter Putz once again delivered in crunch time, beautifully placing a double in right center field that brought in two runs, stretching the Fighting Irish lead to 6-3. He had himself quite the afternoon, with two hits and two RBIs.

Putz scored the final run for Notre Dame after Jack Zyska singled to left field to bring him home. That made the score 7-3 and that would be the final score in Knoxville, with the Fighting Irish pulling off the most historic win in program history. The Irish became the first program in NCAA Tournament history to win four Super Regional games against No. 1 national seeds.