ESPN.com - NCAA - Nebraska eliminated by the Sun Devils

College World Series
Tuesday, November 24

Nebraska eliminated by the Sun Devils

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Jeff Larish kept hitting the long ball, but it was small ball that helped Arizona State advance in the College World Series on Tuesday.

Larish matched a College World Series record with three homers, and J.J. Sferra drove in the game-winning run with a bloop single in the 11th inning as Arizona State rallied for an 8-7 victory and eliminated hometown favorite Nebraska.

"I'm still trying to let it set in," Larish said. "We've been responding to adversity all year, and today was no different. I'm more excited about the team's performance than my own."

Larish's third homer tied it in the bottom of the ninth, and Sferra's single in the 11th punctuated the 4-hour, 7-minute game, sending the Sun Devils (41-24) against No. 7 Florida on Wednesday. Arizona State needs to beat the Gators twice to reach the championship round.

"We don't claim we're great, we don't know how far we can go," ASU coach Pat Murphy said. "We're really elated right now. But we have to get back down to that flat line."

Larish's two-out, ninth-inning drive over the center-field wall off Brett Jensen made him only the third player in CWS history to hit three homers, matching the record set by Florida State's J.D. Drew in 1995 and tied by Stanford's Edmund Muth in 2000.

The homer also negated Andy Gerch's three-run blast for Nebraska (57-15) in the top of the ninth that gave the Huskers a 7-5 lead.

Larish, who bats left-handed, led off the game with an opposite-field shot and homered to right in the third. He now has 23 homers.

"That's ridiculous. It's like a trifecta -- a home run to every field," Murphy said.

But it was a blooper in the 11th that won the game for the Sun Devils.

"It felt like four or five games in one," Murphy said. "It's a tremendous testament to our guys. To do it against Nebraska at Nebraska with their closer on the hill down two in the ninth, a lot of people were assuming it was over."

With Larish coming to the plate as the potential tying run, Nebraska coach Mike Anderson decided not to walk him despite the big day he was having.

"That's a rule of baseball -- a double and he scores," Anderson said. "It wasn't a bad pitch. He just did a good job of hitting it."

Joey Hooft led off the 11th with a single and moved to second on Seth Dhaenens' sacrifice. Sferra, a 150-pound freshman who was the bat boy when ASU last appeared in Omaha in 1998, then popped a Tony Watson pitch into short right center to score Hooft.

"I was trying to drive the ball somewhere, but I didn't do a good job of driving it," Sferra said. "I just got the barrel on it and slapped it over second. We caught the break, and we'll take it."

Zechry Zinicola (4-4), who was held out of the starting lineup as designated hitter because of a bloody nose, came on in the 10th and earned the win.

Jensen (3-5) took the loss after the Sun Devils rallied to force extra innings.

Dhaenens reached on an error to lead off the bottom of the ninth and scored on Joe Persichnia's sacrifice fly. Center fielder Daniel Bruce made a great catch on the play and was able to double off Sferra for the second out, clearing the bases.

Then, Larish teed off again to tie the game and cushioned the blow of Sferra's baserunning blunder.

"I thought he trapped it but he didn't," Sferra said of Bruce's catch. "I was caught up in the moment so I didn't know what to do, being the immature freshman that I am. I went back and I was out. Thank goodness Larish hit another bomb."

The Huskers had rallied from a 5-3 deficit in the top of the ninth to take the lead. Down 5-3 against ASU reliever Pat Bresnehan, Jesse Boyer singled and Joe Simokaitis walked for the fourth time. Alex Gordon made it 5-4 with a hard grounder that shortstop Persichnia couldn't handle.

Gerch then drove an 0-2 pitch into the left-field bleachers, barely clearing the wall for his fourth home run and Nebraska's first three-run homer since March 23.

"It seemed like it was over then and there," Gerch said.

Instead, the season is over for a Nebraska team that reached the CWS for the third time in five years after setting a school record with 57 wins.

"Not a lot of schools in the north are playing this level of baseball," Anderson said. "We're at the World Series this year because these players gave themselves up for this team."