Ball lost in the lights allows Stanford to advance to CWS
Stanford was already playing catch up after losing Game 1 of their best-of-three Super Regional to Texas on Saturday.
Then they needed a Herculean performance on the mound from Quinn Mathews late Sunday night to even get to tonight's winner-take-all Game 3.
That set the stage for one of the craziest moments of this year's NCAA Tournament, a seemingly routine flyball that got lost in the lights and fell to the ground, allowing the Cardinal to overtake the Longhorns and advance to the College World Series.
Drew Bowser had to have thought his popup to right center would be caught for the third out of the ninth inning and send the game to the 10th, but almost immediately it became apparent that Texas outfielders Eric Kennedy and Dylan Campbell had no idea where it was.
Once shortstop Mitchell Daly realized that, it was too late, and Alberto Rios easily crossed the plate to give Stanford the 8-7 win.
It was Rios who almost ended it himself two batters earlier when he roped a two-out double off the left field fence that the entire team, including himself, thought had left the ballpark. He ended up being the winning run after all, but off Bowser's bat instead of his own.
A night after Mathews threw an astonishing 156 pitches in a 16-strikeout masterpiece to beat Texas on Sunday, the Cardinal used six pitchers to reach their 19th College World Series, which will start this Friday.
Bowser kicked off the scoring with a two-run home run, part of a three-run second inning that got the eighth-ranked Cardinal out to an early lead. But Texas bounced back with a three-run inning of their own in the fourth to tie the score.
Stanford immediately scored three more in the bottom of the inning to go up 6-3 before the Longhorns scratched their way back to tie it 6-6 with a three-run eighth. That set up the decisive play that ended it.
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