Notre Dame beats Tennessee, advances to College World Series for third time in program history

Last week, two of the most prominent figures inside the Notre Dame dugout shared profound thoughts on what the week ahead might entail. And in the end, the words of both were vindicated.

Notre Dame beat No. 1 Tennessee Sunday, 7-3, in Game 3 of the Knoxville Super Regional. The victory sends the Fighting Irish (40-15) to the College World Series for the third time in program history and first time since 2002. It leaves the best regular season team in the country at home, mystified. In shock, agony and utter disbelief.

The Vols (57-9) were always aimed at Omaha. Notre Dame stopped them in their tracks.

Graduate senior left fielder Ryan Cole said the Volunteers, frightened by absolutely nobody since March, should be “a little scared” heading into the series. That comment was backed up when the Irish won Game 1 Friday, 8-6. Saturday’s 12-4 Tennessee triumph was a bit of a snap back to reality, but the Irish clearly weren’t done. Cole and company knew they needed to double down. And they did.

Notre Dame head coach Link Jarrett was fine with what Cole said.

“I want them to go speak your mind honestly, and he was right,” Jarrett said.

Jarrett, meanwhile, said a series win would mean “everything.” And though it might take a little longer for it to totally sink in, that comment was already starting to ring true Sunday afternoon while Jarrett’s players celebrated on the field at Lindsey Nelson Stadium in front of a stunned crowd in Tennessee orange.

“I’m so proud of those guys out there,” Jarrett said on a postgame TV interview, gesturing to the Notre Dame players clad in caps commemorating their coming trip to middle America.

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“There’s no team I’ve ever coached that’s more built for this moment than these guys,” Jarrett added. “The versatility of the team, the unselfishness of the pitching staff, the way they engage in anything they feel like might need to be done to win a game — never seen anything like it.”

For most of the game, it looked like the Vols were going to be too much to overcome. It looked like they’d be the ones wearing those hats, like they were supposed to all along. Freshman pitcher Chase Burns was burning heaters by Irish hitters. They couldn’t get barrels on balls.

Until the seventh inning.

Tennessee led 3-1, and Burns went back out for another inning of work. He fanned Irish second baseman Jared Miller to begin the frame. First baseman Carter Putz ripped a double to left center. Burns got Notre Dame’s hottest hitter, Jack Zyska, to pop out to short. Burns was one out away from getting his team six outs away from the CWS.

Notre Dame catcher David LaManna had other ideas.

The graduate senior catcher homered down the right field line. He tied the game, 3-3. Third baseman Jack Brannigan blistered a ball over the fence in left center in the next at-bat. Tennessee led since the second inning. But suddenly, the Irish were ahead in the seventh.

“We came in the dugout in the top of seventh and we were talking about ‘last hour on Sunday,'” Brannigan said. “We’ve talked about it basically since coach Jarrett has been here, and we knew that the last innings were going to be ours.”

Indeed, they were. Notre Dame built on the lead in the eighth.

Putz knocked in two runs with a double. Zyska brought another one home on an RBI single. With freshman pitcher Jack Findlay looking confident and solid as ever on the mound, a four-run lead was more than Notre Dame needed — even if it didn’t feel like it at the time. It never really does anyway.

As clutch as the Irish’s bats were in the late innings, Findlay was even better on the bump. The hurler who recorded two saves in the Statesboro Regional was called upon again with Notre Dame’s season on the line. He entered in the fifth with the Irish down two. His outing wasn’t over until he was at the bottom of a dog pile near the pitcher’s mound with the Irish up four.

Five innings, one hit, two walks, four strikeouts and … zero runs. Findlay got the best lineup in baseball out 15 times without letting a single Vol cross home plate. One of the walks came in the bottom of the ninth. He gave away a bag to a pinch hitter on five pitches. He quickly gathered his wits and induced a game-ending — a College World Series-clinching — 5-4-3 double-play.

“I’m just so impressed with the work that he did,” Brannigan said. “I didn’t know it was five innings. And I remember when he first came in, I was thinking, ‘Alright, who’s next? We’ll get a couple of things out of him and then who’s going to finish it?’ He just took it and ran with it.”

Tennessee’s vaunted hitters — the ones who combined for a nation’s-best 158 home runs this season — might not have been scared of a freshman coming into their ballpark trying to mow them down. Most Tennessee fans certainly weren’t. But maybe they should’ve been. Findlay got the last laugh. He got the ball cap with the location everyone who plays the game wants to end their season in every year.

Omaha.

Findlay, Cole, Jarrett and the Irish will be there. And that means everything.

“I thought we had an Omaha team in 2020. I thought we had an Omaha team last year. We
have one this year, and it wasn’t an easy pathway to get there,” Jarrett said. “In this environment, in this stadium, against a team that is that dangerous. That team is exceptional. We beat them.”