"This team won't quit;" Oregon delivers historic comeback win over Oral Roberts at Eugene Super Regional

Coming into this weekend, no team in NCAA Tournament history had won a Super Regional game after trailing by eight or more runs. Teams who found themselves in such a scenario were a combined 0-96.

For much of Friday evening, the Oregon Ducks appeared doomed to make it 0-for-97.

But on a night that featured too many season-defining moments to count, the Ducks staged the largest comeback win in Super Regional history and are now one win away from clinching a trip to Omaha.

Drew Cowley cracked a walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the ninth to cap a 9-8 win over Oral Roberts at the Eugene Super Regional at PK Park. After a disastrous third inning left them in an eight-run hole, the Ducks scored nine unanswered and overtook a Golden Eagles squad that entered the evening on a 21-game winning streak.

“This team won’t quit,” Oregon coach Mark Wasikowski said. “This team’s got a toughness to them that I’ve never seen before. They won’t quit. To come back from an 8-0 deficit — as disappointed as they were in the third inning — they’ve been working to build this thing to where a day like this could happen.”

Friday marked just the second time in program history and the first time since 2012 that Oregon hosted a Super Regional. The Ducks were backed by a sold-out home crowd of 4,476.

“Our fans were amazing,” Wasikowski said. “I don’t think PK Park has ever been that electric. I think it can even get better, but they would not let us lose.”

However, for the majority of the evening, the Ducks looked like they would be playing with their postseason lives on the line on Saturday. In the top of the third, the Golden Eagles ambushed them for eight runs on just four hits and sent 12 batters to the plate during a frame that lasted over half an hour.

For a team that, prior to Friday, was 3-14 in games in which their opponent scores eight or more runs, the deficit appeared insurmountable.

However, the Ducks stayed in contention by relying on an offensive philosophy that was forged during the doldrums of fall ball.

“We had this thing throughout the fall — we call its “skins games” — during scrimmages,” Oregon catcher Bennett Thompson said. “The goal isn’t to win the overall game. It’s to win every inning. You saw after that third inning, we won something like five of the six innings; because you can’t get it all back at once. But if you can keep chipping away at a pitching staff, keeping the pressure on them, that’s all you can do.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re losing 8-0 or we’re up by 15, our goal is to win the inning.”

The comeback was sparked when Jacob Walsh led off the bottom of the third with a solo homer on the first pitch he saw. Thompson followed with a solo shot of his own four pitches later.

“The first pitch after the (eight runs), that’s a big deal,” Wasikowski said of Walsh’s homer. “The last thing (Oral Roberts) wants is for us to come out there and the first pitch of the inning, ‘Boom, we’re here.’ That’s what Jacob said — ‘We’re not going away.'”

One inning later, the Ducks cut the Golden Eagles’ lead to 8-5 on a three-run blast from Thompson.

A Medford, Ore., native who began the year as Oregon’s backup catcher, Thompson has emerged as one of the program’s hottest hitters during the postseason. Over the past eight games, he is 11-for-27 (.407) with three homers and eight RBI.

His second longball on Friday sent the PK Park crowd into a frenzy and halved the deficit.

In the sixth inning, freshman Drew Smith crushed a solo homer to trim the Oral Roberts lead to 8-6.

Meanwhile, the Oregon bullpen kept the Ducks in contention behind shutdown outings from Ian Umlandt and Logan Mercado. Umlandt tossed 1 1/3 scoreless innings and allowed just one runner to reach base.

Mercado threw 3.0 scoreless frames and struck out five while walking three and surrendering just one hit. On his 62nd and final pitch of the night, he struck Blaze Brothers out swinging to strand runners at first and second and escape a seventh-inning jam.

Oregon immediately capitalized on the momentum. Rikuu Nishida reached on a catchers interference call in the bottom of the seventh. The next batter, Bryce Boettcher, placed a well-executed bunt that resulted in an error by Golden Eagles’ pitcher Jacob Widener to give the Ducks two on with one out.

Cowley followed by depositing an RBI single into shallow right field to plate Nishida and make it 8-7.

Two batters later, Tanner Smith lifted an RBI single of his own to right to tie the game at 8-8.

TIE GAME!

Drew Cowley RBI single scores Rikuu Nishida@A5D0l (school record 65th run scored this yr) to make it 8-7 ODU

Two batters later, Tanner Smith @tannerr_smith drops in a single, scoring Bryce Boettcher @bryce_boettcher, to tie the game at 8! pic.twitter.com/OfkCujxkgV

— PNW College Baseball Report (@PNW_CBR) June 10, 2023

In the top of the eighth, the Ducks turned the game over the veteran right-hander Matt Dallas to face the top of the Oral Roberts lineup.

He produced a quick groundout and then surrendered a single to Justin Quinn. With the Golden Eagles’ top hitter, Jonah Cox, at the plate, Dallas fell behind 3-0 and was in danger of putting the go-ahead run on second base.

But he battled back and struck out Cox swinging. Wasikowski and pitching coach Jake Angier then called on closer Josh Mollerus to face cleanup hitters Matt Hogan, and the right-hander forced a pop-up to third base to end the inning.

“That’s just demoralizing for the opposing team, I think,” Thompson said of the at-bat. “Dallas and Mollerus are two veteran guys who know what they’re doing. They don’t care if it’s 3-0, 0-0, or 0-2. They just execute their pitch and then move on to the next pitch. Those were huge momentum shifters.

“Credit to those guys. They know their stuff is good.”

After the Ducks went three up, and three down in the bottom of the eighth, Mollerus retired Oral Roberts in order on just 11 pitches in the ninth, setting the stage for Oregon’s lineup to complete the comeback.

The Golden Eagles had All-American closer Cade Denton warmed up and ready to go when the inning began. But head coach Ryan Folmar opted to stick with right-hander Dalton Patton, who had thrown the eighth.

“It’s easy to look back and say that, but we made the decision because we felt good with where we were at that point in the game and went with Dalton,” Folmar said.

Patton walked Gavin Grant on four pitches and then walked Nishida on four pitches to put the winning run in scoring position with nobody out. The Golden Eagles then opted to turn to Denton.

Boettcher laid down a bunt to the third base side, and Denton made an outstanding play to throw Grant out at third for the first out of the inning.

He then ran up a 1-2 count on Cowley before the senior shortstop turned on a slider and cracked a walk-off single to win the game.

“I wasn’t trying to do too much,” Cowley said when asked about his approach during the at-bat. “Being in control is what we talk about — just slowing the game down and looking for something up that I can put a good swing on. … It’s just awesome. Just a good feeling. I was a team effort today.”