Griffen Paige twirled an eight-inning gem and Wright State staved off a desperate ninth-inning comeback to upset Vanderbilt 5-4, eliminating the top national seed from the NCAA baseball tournament on Sunday in Nashville, Tenn.
Vanderbilt is the first No. 1 overall seed that failed to reach the regional final round since the current tournament format was introduced in 1999.
The season also ended for No. 2 national seed Texas, which lost to UTSA in the Austin Regional championship. UTSA beat the host squad 7-4 on Sunday night after dealing the Longhorns a 9-7 defeat on Saturday. Texas (44-14) won an elimination game with Kansas State 15-8 earlier Sunday to earn a rematch with the Roadrunners (47-13), who went 3-0 in Austin after an 0-6 all-time record in the NCAA postseason.
The top two seeds getting eliminated in regionals had only happened once before since the current format was implemented, when No. 1 Oregon State and No. 2 Florida were bounced in 2014.
Wright State (40-21) advanced to the Nashville Regional final against Louisville. Needing to beat Louisville on both Sunday night and Monday to advance to the super regionals, the Raiders fell 6-0 on Sunday night.
Against Vanderbilt, Paige (2-3) tossed eight-plus innings of one-hit ball for Wright State, giving up a home run to Brodie Johnston and allowing two runs and six walks with three strikeouts.
It was a wholly different story for Vanderbilt starter Austin Nye (2-1), who gave up four runs on four hits in the first inning and was replaced before the second. Boston Smith hit a two-run homer off Nye and Luke Arnold went yard in the next at-bat.
After Paige exited for Wright State after allowing a walk in the top of the ninth, the Commodores (43-18) mounted a comeback against the bullpen with Mike Mancini slicing a 5-1 deficit in half on a two-out, two-run single. Rustan Rigdon followed with an RBI ground-rule double before Warren Hartzell got RJ Austin to fly out to end the game.
“We show a lot of toughness,” Page said postgame. “There’s never a doubt in our minds that we can compete with anybody out there. These guys are a good team, obviously, the No. 1 seed in the country, and we show up and we never had a doubt. We think we can compete with anybody at the end of the day.”
Vanderbilt won the College World Series in 2014 and 2019 and was runner-up in 2015 and 2021. The Commodores found themselves in an elimination game after falling 3-2 to Louisville on Saturday.
–Field Level Media
