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Arizona State One Win Away From Championship Round
June 22, 2005
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Arizona State kept up their remarkable run in the College World Series, beating Florida 6-1 Wednesday to move within a win of the championship round. Erik Averill (11-4), working on two days' rest, threw a five-hitter in 92-degree heat and retired the last eight batters he faced in his fifth complete game of the season. The Sun Devils (42-24), who came into the CWS with the fewest wins of any team in the field, have won three straight after losing in the first round and are 5-0 in NCAA tournament elimination games. They have to beat the seventh-seeded Gators (47-21) again Thursday to advance to the best-of-three championship series that starts Saturday against Texas or Baylor. The game was played less than 24 hours after Arizona State's dramatic 11-inning win over Nebraska, highlighted by Jeff Larish's CWS record-tying three home runs. Unlike that game, the Sun Devils led from start to finish against the Gators. Travis Buck, the Oakland Athletics' first-round supplemental draft pick, homered deep into the right-field seats off Bryan Ball in the first inning for his sixth home run. Ball (7-5), who hadn't pitched since June 4 in the regional opener against Stetson, went six innings, allowing four hits and four runs. He walked three and struck out one. Arizona State added to its lead on Seth Dhaenens' RBI groundout in the fourth. Jared Kubin's run-scoring groundout pulled Florida to 2-1 in the fifth, but the Sun Devils got that run back the next inning on an RBI single by Colin Curtis. J.J. Sferra made it 5-1 in the seventh with a two-run single off reliever Mike Pete that closely resembled the blooper to center that won Tuesday's game against Nebraska. Dhaenens greeted reliever Connor Falkenbach with an RBI single in the eighth. The top five batters in Florida's lineup went a combined 1-for-20 against Averill, who had thrown 76 pitches in 5 2-3 innings against Tennessee on Sunday.
Sun Devils shortstop Andrew Romine played with eight stitches in his right cheek. Romine was cut after a ball deflected off his hands into his face while he was batting against Nebraska on Tuesday. |
