OMAHA, Neb. — How can Arizona bounce back from its heartbreaking extra-inning loss to Vanderbilt?
Funny you should ask.
The Wildcats played in a similar game earlier this season. It just so happened to be against Stanford, the team they’re facing Monday in an elimination game in the College World Series.
The Cats lost to the Cardinal 5-4 in 13 innings on May 7. Arizona struck out a season-high 18 times — one fewer than its total against Vanderbilt in Saturday’s 7-6, 12-inning setback at TD Ameritrade Park.
Less than 15 hours later, Arizona and Stanford took the field again at Sunken Diamond. The Wildcats blitzed the Cardinal, scoring in each of the first six innings in a 20-2 rout.
That game continued a pattern that would persist for the rest of the season: Every time they lost a game, the Wildcats would win the next one. The haven’t lost consecutive contests since a three-game losing streak in mid-April.
“These guys have a lot of confidence in their ability to respond,” UA coach Jay Johnson said Sunday after a light practice at Creighton University. “We haven’t ever played complacent when we’ve won. And we’ve never been down too long when we’ve lost. So I expect that to hold going forward here.”
The situations aren’t identical, of course. The stakes are much higher Monday. The winning team will face the loser of the Vanderbilt-North Carolina State matchup. The loser will go home.
But it’s critical that the Wildcats remain true to themselves, right fielder Ryan Holgate said.
“It’s more a matter of us just sticking with what we came here to do, which is stay within ourselves and just have as much fun as we can,” said Holgate, whose two-run homer off Kumar Rocker gave Arizona a short-lived 5-3 lead Saturday. “It was awesome to have a game like that (against Vanderbilt). Obviously a disappointing result at the end. But nothing changes.”
Johnson sent Garrett Irvin to the mound in the second game of the Stanford series, and he’s expected to get the starting assignment Monday. Irvin pitched superbly against the Cardinal, allowing just two runs and five hits in seven innings.
“There’s going to be more people in the stands, but I think we play better when there’s more people,” Irvin said. “Assuming that I start (Monday), I just have the mindset of try to pitch the same as I have been.
“We’ve already played them. I guess it’s an advantage to both sides. They’ve already seen me. But I’ve already seen them.”
Arizona has seen two versions of Irvin during the postseason. In his first outing, against UC Santa Barbara in the Tucson Regional, Irvin authored a three-hit, 10-strikeout shutout. In Game 2 of the Super Regional series against Ole Miss, the left-hander yielded seven runs in just 1 1/3 innings.
Irvin believes that performance could benefit him Monday. He gets more out of a loss than a win.
“I learn more about different hitters and how I need to change my approach,” said Irvin, who’s 6-3 with a 4.19 ERA. “A positive of going 1 1/3 is I get to see what I did wrong and try to work that into this week.”
Irvin hasn’t suffered consecutive losses as a Wildcat. He said the main reason this team so seldom has is that “we just hate losing. Once you lose once, it just fuels a fire.”
Holgate said it’s hard for anyone to beat Arizona twice. The last team to do it was ... Stanford.
The Cardinal responded to the 20-2 loss on May 8 with an 8-2 win to take the series. Stanford’s starter that day was right-hander Alex Williams, who’s expected to start Monday.
Williams, who missed the early portion of the season because of injury, has pitched spectacularly in the postseason. Williams has allowed just five hits and one earned run 16 innings, including a two-hit, 10-strikeout shutout at Texas Tech to secure Stanford’s spot in Omaha.
Williams limited Arizona to three hits in six scoreless innings. He’s 4-2 with a 3.06 ERA.
Although he and his staff have more background on Stanford than Vanderbilt or NC State, Johnson believes in starting over when it comes to game prep. What happened a little over a month ago is relevant, he said, but only to a point.
“We need to do a reset,” Johnson said. “They’ve changed a little bit as a team since we played them, played extremely well in the regional and Super Regional. ... We need to look at how they’ve been in the postseason.
“It’s kind of like the Grand Canyon thing (Arizona’s first opponent in the NCAA Tournament), where our players know they’re a good team; it’ll command their attention. I feel like we’ve played very well against really good teams. So I expect our team to be ready.”
