Notre Dame beats Texas in College World Series opener, will face Oklahoma on Sunday

OMAHA, Neb. — If your question was how long it would take Notre Dame to reintroduce itself to the College World Series in the form of an all-important run on the scoreboard, it was answered in eight pitches. Less than five minutes.

Such little time there were hardly any people in the stands.

Irish second baseman Jared Miller didn’t wait for fans to file into Charles Schwab Field fashionably (and angrily) late because of a ticket malfunction issue at stadium entrance gates. Consider the ones clad in green pleasantly surprised when they got to their seats and Notre Dame already had something other than zero next to its name.

Miller went yard over the right field fence on a hitter’s count to put the Irish up early. They never looked back. In its first CWS game since 2002, Notre Dame beat No. 9 Texas, 7-3, to advance to the winner’s bracket against Oklahoma Sunday at 7 p.m. ET. It was the Irish’s second 7-3 win in a row against a UT ranked in the top 10. The other came against No. 1 Tennessee in the Knoxville Super Regional final, the win that sent Notre Dame to Omaha for the first time in 20 years.

“The underdog story, we don’t really feel that internally,” Miller said. “We know that when we go out and play good baseball, we can play with anyone in the country.”

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June 17 has been good to Notre Dame. The Irish beat Rice, 5-3, in a CWS elimination game on that same date in 2002. The blue and gold needed a walk-off blast off the bat of Brian Stavisky that day. No such heroics were required two decades later. Head coach Link Jarrett‘s team got up early, built on its lead, and rode its bullpen to victory.

Jarrett didn’t have to do much for it to play out that way.

“Stay out of their way,” Jarrett said on how he approaches coaching such a veteran-laden team. “Just let them go. That’s the beauty of it. Let them go. It was almost as relaxed as I’ve been coaching a game. That’s easy to say. The biggest part is because the game played out how I was hoping. If this thing goes sideways in a hurry, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been.”

Notre Dame scraped runs across in the third and fourth to take a 3-1 lead. Those tallies were manufactured. It was a hit by pitch, stolen base and single in the third. Two singles and a squeeze bunt in the fourth.

Small ball. The Link Jarrett way.

Then the Irish exploded for three in the fifth to jump out to a 6-1 advantage. Three straight singles, a balk and another single did the job in that frame. Texas climbed back to 6-3 with runs in the fifth and sixth, but first baseman Carter Putz put an exclamation point on the Irish’s win with a solo shot in the top of the ninth. The game finished how it started.

Notre Dame’s pitching, the staff with the best team ERA of any team in the CWS field, got it to that point.

Left-handed starter John Michael Bertrand pitched admirably against one of the most talented lineups in all of college baseball. He went 5 1/3 innings with three earned runs on six hits and one walk. He struck out four.

“I was able to go fastball on both sides of the plate,” Bertrand said. “Cutter in to the righties. It wasn’t called, but it was enough to break back off the plate.”

Jarrett went to his top-two reliever combination of senior Alex Rao and freshman Jack Findlay. Outside of a wild pitch that plated a run against the first batter Rao faced, that duo picked up where Bertrand left off.

Rao struck out two and didn’t allow any hits in 1 1/3 innings. Findlay replaced him to get the last Longhorn batter of the seventh inning, and he struck out the two-hole hitter with a runner on first. Findlay’s second batter to face leading off the bottom of the eighth? None other than NCBWA Dick Howser National Player of the Year Ivan Melendez, owner of 32 home runs and an a batting average a hair under .400.

Findlay struck him out.

Findlay did not allow a run in 2 1/3 innings. He has pitched 13 innings in the NCAA Tournament and has only allowed one run. Seemingly out of nowhere, the freshman has emerged as the late-inning bullpen arm every championship-caliber arm is able to employ in the biggest moments. More of them are coming. And Findlay will once again get the ball when they do.