Oral Roberts players reveal coach's message before ninth inning

Oral Roberts pulled off a stunning victory in their first game of the Men’s College World Series. The Golden Eagles completed a late-game comeback against the TCU Horned Frogs with a flurry of runs in the ninth inning to take the game 6-5. After the game, a few of the Oral Roberts players revealed head coach Ryan Folmar and the rest of the coaching staff’s messages to them heading into the ninth inning.

“They just told us string together good ABs,” said senior outfielder Justin Quinn. “Stay relaxed, go out there and just be who you are. If we put together a couple good ABs we can create a rally. That’s what we did.”

In the ninth inning, Quinn had the last Oral Roberts’ base hit of the game after the Golden Eagles climbed into the lead with a four-run inning. The first run was scored on a single to left-center by Drew Stahl. And the others were courtesy of a three-run home run by senior infielder Blaze Brothers, who had this to say about the where’s the confidence from his head coach.

“On the mound, he just said go win this game right here,” said Brothers. “And that just kind of, like, instilled a little bit of confidence in us, too, like, let’s go get this. We’re right here; let’s go get it.”

Following Brothers’ three-run home run, which gave Oral Roberts the 6-5 lead, the Golden Eagles still had to go out and play defense for just one more inning. Closing pitcher Cade Denton was in charge of keeping TCU scoreless to close out the inning and the game. And he, too, shared his thoughts before taking the mound.

“I’m sitting in the dugout watching our guys go out and put four up on the board, and obviously, I came into the dugout thinking I needed to go back out and get a job done if we get the lead here,” said Denton. “Being able to get that opportunity from these guys — Wes comes over to me after Blaze’s home run and says, ‘This is your game.’ Obviously, going into that, I knew I had to go and give my best effort out there.”

Denton was challenged with maintaining Oral Roberts’ 6-5 lead in TCU’s last at-bats in the bottom of the ninth inning. Denton was peppered in the eighth inning by TCU, giving up three runs which gave the Horned frogs the 5-2 lead heading into the final inning of the game. But instead of swapping pitchers, Folmar decided to instill confidence into his closer.

“So after that first inning, lacking a little confidence, Blaze’s home run definitely instilled that confidence in me, and knowing that Wes was going to hand me the ball out there in the ninth inning, it instills infinite amounts of confidence in a pitcher to go out there and getting the ball after getting the lead.”

Oral Roberts displayed a high level of trust within his ball club, and it paid off significantly. Now, the Golden Eagles advance to the next opponent. At the same time, TCU is down to their last life in the double elimination opening round of the College World Series.