Notre Dame Shows It’s No Underdog In Win Against Texas

Image credit: Notre Dame LHP John Michael Bertrand (Photo courtesy of Notre Dame)

OMAHA – Notre Dame coach Link Jarrett on Friday night said he wasn’t going to tell other people his team is good. By this stage of the season, he and the Fighting Irish shouldn’t have to. After a solid regular season, they rolled through the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament, sweeping the Statesboro Regional and then knocking off No. 1 Tennessee to reach the College World Series for the first time in 20 years.

But on Friday, on the sport’s biggest stage, Notre Dame delivered another impressive all-around performance, the latest piece of evidence of how good this team is. Notre Dame beat Texas, 7-3, to open the CWS and advance in the winner’s bracket to play Oklahoma on Sunday.

“I’m not making the statement,” Jarrett said. “I’m not going to go tell people I think our team’s good. You just have to go play well and eventually people will say, ‘You guys are pretty good.’

“There wasn’t really a statement there.”

There was no statement to make Friday. Notre Dame has been excellent all season. Ranked No. 4 in the Preseason Top 25, the Fighting Irish peaked at No. 1 a month into the season. There were some ups and downs from there, like every team but Tennessee experienced this season, but they consistently churned out wins. And, since the end of the regular season, Notre Dame has found another gear. It is now 8-2 in the postseason, beat a team in Tennessee that was talked about as the runaway favorite in the NCAA Tournament and now is two wins from playing for a national championship after beating Texas, the Preseason No. 1 team.

The selection committee may not have seeded Notre Dame and the Irish may not have been on the CWS stage for 20 years. But underdogs? That’s not how they see themselves and, at this point, no one outside the Irish clubhouse should either.

“I think a lot of the kind of underdog story is we don’t really feel that internally on the team,” second baseman Jared Miller said. “We know when we go out and we play good baseball that we can play with anyone in the country.”

Against Texas, Notre Dame did what it has done throughout the season. It played clean baseball, making no errors and walking just two batters. Its offense was all over Texas ace Pete Hansen, piling up nine hits in 4.1 innings to knock him out of the game. Jarrett was able to throw his playbook wide open, calling for a safety squeeze, putting runners in motion and putting on the ever-popular home run sign. On the mound, the Irish became the first team this season to hold the Longhorns without an extra-base hit thanks to the work of ace John Michael Bertrand, fireman Alex Rao and freshman closer Jack Findlay.

“I thought they were better than us tonight,” Texas coach David Pierce said.

Notre Dame jumped out to an early lead against Texas when Miller drove the eighth pitch of the game out to right field for a solo home run. The Irish would never relinquish that lead. Bertrand held the powerful Texas offense in check, limiting the Longhorns to three runs on six hits and a walk in 5.1 innings.

Bertrand isn’t overpowering, but he has exceptional feel for pitching and brought that to bear Friday. The lefthander worked his fastball to both sides of the plate, had feel for both his curveball and slider and mixed in a changeup. His ability to pound the strike zone and especially challenge the Longhorns with his fastball and slider made things difficult for their hitters.

“Being able to bury that slider, throw the curveball for strike, changeups away, sinkers away, fastballs and cutters in, it was kind of the way I’ve been going all year,” Bertrand said. “Just to get back to the basis and execute one pitch at a time.”

While Bertrand was holding Texas at bay, the Notre Dame offense was figuring out Hansen. After he allowed just Miller to reach base in the first inning, the Irish put at least two runners on base in each of the next four innings, eventually chasing him from the game in the fifth.

Notre Dame didn’t hit Hansen all over the park—its only extra-base hit against him was Miller’s home run—but it was a relentless barrel attack. Hansen, who was exceptional in the regular season, has faltered in the last two weeks for Texas and the Longhorns have lost both of his starts. Pierce said it wasn’t clear what had changed for Hansen, other than he hasn’t been as sharp as he was early in the year.

The Irish were happy to take advantage Friday. Leading 3-1 going into the fifth inning, they notched three straight one-out hits to knock Hansen out of the game and all three runners eventually came around to score, giving Notre Dame a commanding lead.

From there, the Notre Dame bullpen took over. Rao got four important outs to bridge the gap from Bertrand to Findlay, who has been a revelation at the back of the bullpen in the postseason. He retired all seven batters he faced, striking out two batters to earn his fourth save of the NCAA Tournament.

“He’s just poised and competitive,” Jarrett said. “You can’t gauge the competitiveness until you see (him) pitching competitively in high stakes situations. And it looks better than it did when we were in Loftus (indoor practice facility) and we were in the fall.”

When Findlay induced a ground ball to third base to end the game, the Irish spilled out of the dugout to congratulate each other. Their goal every day is to go 1-0 and on Friday they did just that. It was the perfect start to their Omaha stay and maybe at long last the performance that will push any underdog talk away for good.