Gage Wood on no-hitter vs. Murray State in Omaha: 'I felt a little invincible'

Gage Wood felt nobody could touch him Monday when he threw a no-hitter in the College World Series. The Arkansas pitcher threw just the third no-hitter in the history of the CWS.

When you feel invincible, it’s pretty easy to start mowing down hitters. At least for Wood that’s how it was.

The Razorbacks star was so far into the zone, he almost didn’t realize what he was doing until the end of the game. Talk about being locked in!

“Yesterday, I felt a little invincible,” Wood said on The Pat McAfee Show. “I really didn’t even know that I struck out that many guys. I didn’t know it was even close to that. I thought maybe it was, you know, 10 to 12. It didn’t feel like they were just striking out that much. But then, I mean, innings stack up, strike outs stack up and then after the game, they said 19. And I was like, what? I didn’t know. I just knew it was a no hitter after the game.”

Wood set the record with 19 strikeouts over nine innings of no-hit ball. The 3-0 win over Murray State kept Arkansas’ national title hopes alive.

“After that seventh inning, it was really starting to, like, come to my mind, and I was just telling myself, like, one pitch at a time,” Wood said. “And it’s kind of like that throughout the whole game, you know? But after that happened, I knew I had to just figure it out, and I knew I had to move on and just keep pitching, because it was still, I mean, it was only a 3-0 ball game. (If) you give a team any hope in a game like that, you may be going home, so I just had to figure it out and move on and that’s what I did and it ended up working out for me.”

The seventh inning, which Wood referred to, was his last perfect inning. Wood hit a batter in the eighth inning, but still finished on top.

There was some question as to whether Wood would get the chance to finish out his perfect game bid. He was at 90 pitches through the first seven frames, starting to get up there in pitch count.

Manager Dave Van Horn felt good about sticking with him, and Gage Wood made it pay. Outside of the hit by pitch, he was clean through the eighth and ninth frames, polishing off the no-hitter. With the win, Arkansas will move on and face either LSU or UCLA. It will be another elimination game, with the Hogs needing to win that to advance to the bracket final against the winner.