Posted on: Tuesday, May 29, 2001

Rice rallies to defeat Baylor, 5-4, in baseball regional

Associated Press

Eric Arnold's RBI-single capped a three-run rally in the bottom of the ninth inning as Rice, the Western Athletic Conference champion, rallied to defeat Baylor, 5-4, in the championship game of an NCAA regional in Houston.

The Owls' first run in the rally scored on a fielder's choice and the second came home on a wild pitch by Zane Carlson. Kyle Edens took over for Carlson and Arnold lined his first pitch down the left field line, driving in pinch-runner Isamu Nigro with the winning run.

Rice will play at Nebraska in one of eight Super Regionals. The Cornhuskers are led by pitcher Shane Komine, a 1998 Kalani High graduate.

• South Bend, Ind., Regional: William Collazo allowed two runs in six innings as Florida International beat Notre Dame, 5-4, in the championship game.

Notre Dame forced the deciding game with a 5-2 victory earlier yesterday.

SUPER REGIONALS

• LSU will hit road: Louisiana State and retiring coach Skip Bertman are hitting the road for a shot at one last national title together. But they won't have to travel too far.

The defending College World Series champion Tigers (43-20-1), will play Tulane (53-10) at Zephyr Field in Metairie, La., in one of the eight super regional series, which begin Friday.

All eight of the national seeds will play host to the best-of-three super regionals, and the winner of each advances to the College World Series, which starts June 8 in Omaha, Neb. The sites were announced yesterday by the Division I baseball committee, which set up brackets at the beginning of the tournament to determine the super regional pairings.

Wally Groff, chairman of the baseball committee, said the national seeds were given highest priority to play host.

"There is a possibility that certain things could have come up that a national seed wouldn't host, like quality of the field, security problems at the regionals or something as simple as school sites not being able to secure hotels and things like that," Groff said. "But the national seeds are given preference."

The other sites and pairings are: Mississippi State (39-22) at Cal State-Fullerton (44-16); South Carolina (48-18) at Stanford (46-15); Clemson (41-20) at Miami (47-12); Florida State (46-17) at Georgia (45-19); Tennessee (44-18) at East Carolina (47-11); Rice (47-18) at Nebraska (48-14); and Florida International (43-19) at Southern California (51-12).

Each of the teams placed bids, ranging from $35,000 to $180,000, to play host to a super regional.