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Cardinal eliminate Irish from CWS Posted: Tuesday June 18, 2002 10:57 PMUpdated: Wednesday June 19, 2002 10:12 AM
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Stanford will have a chance to get back at the team that forced the Cardinal into the elimination round of the College World Series. And it's a very familiar foe -- Texas. The Cardinal took a 2-0 lead on a Sam Fuld's first-inning homer and went on to a 5-3 victory over Notre Dame on Tuesday night, eliminating the Fighting Irish from their first CWS since 1957. Now all that stands between Stanford and a third straight trip to the CWS title game is Texas, which beat the Cardinal 8-7 Monday in their 10th meeting in the last two seasons. "We don't get tired of Texas. They give us good competition," Fuld said. "There's not much we don't know about them. There's not much they don't know about us."
If Texas wins Thursday night's game, it advances to Saturday's championship game of the double-elimination tournament. If Stanford wins, they meet again Friday night. "They're a quality team and it forces you to play your best baseball. What better place to play Texas than here?" Stanford coach Mark Marquess said. The Cardinal, CWS runners-up the last two years, improved to 40-0 this season when holding the lead after eight innings by beating the Irish for the second time in the CWS. Stanford won 4-3 in the first round. The Fighting Irish (50-18) had 22 come-from-behind wins this season, but could not come up with one more after Stanford added an insurance run on Andy Topham's squeeze bunt in the ninth. "We've been a team that's come back all year long. It just didn't happen for us today," said Steve Stanley who was 2-for-3 with an RBI and a stolen base and scored a run for Notre Dame. Dan Rich got his sixth save when he struck out Joe Thaman to end the game. Rich relieved John Hudgins (10-1) who allowed two earned runs and six hits over 5 2/3 innings. Peter Ogilvie (7-5) recovered well after being down 2-0 on just three pitches, but didn't get the run support he needed. Ogilvie also went 5 2/3 innings, allowing four runs and seven hits. "Quite frankly we came here to win. That's the way our players are raised and the way they think," Notre Dame coach Paul Mainieri said. "We just came up a little bit short. I thought Stanford was just a little bit better than we were in these two games." The Irish never trailed by more than two runs. After Stanford went up 4-2 in the sixth on an RBI single by Jason Cooper, the Irish came right back with a run in the bottom half of the inning. Brian Stavisky led off with a single and scored when Quentin bobbled the ball right after a single by Paul O'Toole. The Irish had runners at first and second with two outs later in the sixth when Hudgins was lifted for Rich, who got out of the inning on a nice play by Topham. Topham ran from shortstop to left field and caught Javier Sanchez's pop-up while sliding on his knees in foul territory. The Irish had another great opportunity in the fifth with the bases loaded and no outs, but got just one run. Thaman popped out to second, Stanley hit a sacrifice fly to score Matt Bok from third and Steve Sollmann grounded out to short to end the inning. "I felt like I got us into it so I really needed to get us out of it," Hudgins said. "I didn't think they were going to get the ball out on me so I went right at them." Carter hit Ogilvie's first pitch of the game for a single to right, then Fuld quickly followed with the homer to left that just carried over the wall. Quentin added a solo homer in the second, his 12th of the season.
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Stanford coach Mark Marquess discusses the pivotal point of his team’s win, and Notre Dame’s Paul Mainieri admits he was impressed with the Cardinal. 
