University of North Carolina Athletics
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Oregon State
Oregon State Tops Tar Heels 9-3 In CWS Finals
June 24, 2007 | Baseball
June 24, 2007
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Oregon State became the first team in a decade to repeat as College World Series champion, completing a dominant run through the tournament with a 9-3 victory over North Carolina on Sunday night.
The Beavers (49-18) won all five of their CWS games, including a sweep of the Tar Heels in the best-of-three finals, and trailed for only one of 45 innings they played in Omaha.
North Carolina was runner-up for the second straight year after the first CWS finals rematch since Arizona State and USC met in 1973. Oregon State is the first back-to-back champion since LSU in 1996-97 and the fifth overall.
Darwin Barney's two-run homer gave the Beavers the lead in the second inning of the decisive game. Jordan Lennerton hit his second homer in two nights, a two-run shot in the eighth.
The Tar Heels (57-16) didn't get much going against Oregon State's steady pitching and solid defense, and were shut down whenever they appeared on the verge of a big inning.
Mark Grbavac and Joe Paterson combined to retire the last seven North Carolina batters. Paterson got a called third strike on pinch-hitter Kyle Shelton to end the game and send the Beavers sprinting out of their dugout for the celebratory pile.
The Beavers knocked out North Carolina starter Luke Putkonen (8-2) in the second inning after Barney lined a pitch over the left-field wall. Another run scored on third baseman Chad Flack's throwing error.
Putkonen, a sophomore, went only 1 2-3 innings in the shortest outing of his career.
Tar Heels coach Mike Fox brought in closer Andrew Carignan, whose appearance in the second inning was his earliest in a game in his career.
Singles off Carignan by Santschi in the third and John Wallace in the fifth stretched the Beavers' lead to 5-2.
Dustin Ackley hit his third homer of the CWS and 10th of the season to pull North Carolina to 5-3, but Scott Santschi's third RBI single and Chris Hopkins' infield hit made it 7-3 in the seventh.
Ackley's RBI single in the first put North Carolina up 1-0 and ended a streak of 61 innings over seven games in which Oregon State led or was tied. The Beavers hadn't trailed in a CWS game in 50 innings, since the fourth frame of Game 2 of last year's finals.
North Carolina's first three batters reached against Mike Stutes (12-4) in the first and third innings, but the Tar Heels came away with only one run each time.
Ackley homered in the fifth, and two more batters reached before Stutes induced an inning-ending groundout.
After Garrett Gore doubled in the sixth, Anton Maxwell entered and hit Josh Horton to put two runners on with the dangerous Ackley coming up. Ackley drove a liner into left field that Wallace snagged to end the threat.
In the seventh, Tim Fedroff tried to score on Seth Williams' hit to the left-field wall. But Wallace threw to Barney, the shortstop, whose relay home was in plenty of time to get Fedroff at the plate.
The Beavers lost six position players, two-thirds of their starting rotation and the closer from last year's team. They almost were left out of the NCAA tournament after they went 4-8 in May and finished tied for sixth in the Pacific-10 Conference.
Texas (1949-50), Southern California (1970-74) and Stanford (1987-88) also won consecutive titles.
