OMAHA, Neb. — For the ninth straight year, there will be no national championship for the top-seeded team at the College World Series.

The pitching tandem of Danny Sandbrink and Erik Davis, and a Stanford offense that produced timely hits were too much last night for a Miami club that played nowhere near midseason form late in the year.

The Cardinal dispatched the Hurricanes with an 8-3 victory and now get a day off. Next, Stanford will try to beat Georgia twice to win Bracket 1 and reach the best-of-three championship round for the first time since 2003.

Sean Ratliff's homer and Cord Phelps' triple in a four-run fifth inning were the key blows for the Cardinal (41-23-2). But it was the steady efforts of Sandbrink and Davis that kept Miami from scoring more than one run in any inning.

"We knew they were going to score some runs," Davis said, "but if we could keep them out of the big inning, we were able to keep momentum on our side."

The Hurricanes (53-11) failed to join the 1999 squad as the only No. 1 national seeds to win the College World Series.

Miami, ranked No. 1 for most of the second half of the season, has been eliminated in three games in each of its four CWS appearances since 2003.

Jim Morris, who has brought 10 of his 14 Miami teams to the CWS, said the Hurricanes simply weren't at their best when they needed to be.

"In the middle of the season, I felt like we could beat anybody at any time because we had all the cylinders clicking," he said. "We didn't get it going out here."

Phelps had three of Stanford's 11 hits and drove in two runs. He had a single and double to go with his triple and missed out on hitting for the cycle when he flied out to short right in the seventh inning. No one has hit for the cycle at the CWS since Minnesota's Jerry Kindall in 1956.

"Obviously, I knew in the back of my mind I was a home run away from a cycle," said Phelps, who has 13 homers. "When you think about something like that, it never happens."

After Miami's first two batters reached on singles, Sandbrink and Davis combined to hold the Hurricanes without a hit until the sixth inning. Sandbrink allowed two hits and one run in four innings.

Davis (8-3) shut down a Hurricanes threat when he entered in the fifth.

After Sandbrink issued a leadoff walk, Davis walked his first batter to put two runners on. But he got Jemile Weeks to foul out trying to bunt and struck out Miami's top sluggers, Yonder Alonso and Mark Sobolewski.