NC State baseball’s Omaha return delivers more heartbreak — but Wolfpack still has a chance

It had been 1,085 days. And to be exact: 1,085 days, 9 hours and 59 minutes.

That’s how much time had elapsed between 1:10 a.m. local Omaha time on June 26, 2021, and 1:09 p.m. here on Saturday. That’s how much time had passed from N.C. State’s disqualification from the College World Series almost three years ago to the first pitch of the Wolfpack’s game against Kentucky on Saturday in this College World Series.

State’s players and coaches have tried not to make it about the past but the history is unavoidable. They arrived in Omaha with a sense of unfinished business; the goal of trying to make right what longtime coach Elliott Avent and his players considered to be the most wrong of wrongs. And now whatever heartbreak or anger they carried as motivation will be joined by urgency and pressure.

There could be no wondering this time, at least. No fanciful what-ifs. In its first College World Series game since the One That Never Happened — the one that was canceled, after State was disqualified in 2021 due to COVID-19 protocol — the Wolfpack suffered an excruciating 10-inning, 5-4 defeat that ended in however long it took for Mitchell Daly’s home run to leave the park.

A couple seconds? Maybe less, or a little more?

The Wildcats poured out of their dugout. Daly’s teammates waited for him at home.

State’s players, meanwhile, quietly walked off the field, heads hanging. So much anticipation, and then this. So much joy in getting back here, belief creeping in that maybe there was some kind of destiny at work, and then this. Afterward, Avent appeared in a daze, a blank stare covering his face while he walked from the dugout to his team’s locker room, to a press conference where he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

What could he say? What could his players say?

They’d all shared such a longing to return to this place and to this point, after 2021. They’d all shared such a deep desire to have another shot, and this time to reach the championship series, at least. And then State went ahead by a run against top-seeded Kentucky in the top of the ninth, turning hope into near-reality, before losing that lead in the bottom of the ninth.

It was like that an inning later, too, when Derrick Smith, the Wolfpack’s third pitcher of the game, gave up a lead-off walk only to retire Kentucky’s next hitter, and only for catcher Jacob Cozart to unleash a straight-line laser of a throw to second to nab Devin Burkes as he attempted to steal.

There was brief relief: two outs. Nobody on.

Then Daly on a 1-2 count sent a deep fly to left, and it looked gone off his bat. And that’s how State went from leading by a run in the ninth to losing by a run in the 10th; how it went from that close to the winner’s bracket to the specter now that if it loses Monday its season is over.

This is what Avent said he told his team:

“I said, playing in front of — what does this place hold? — playing in front of 25,000 people, I didn’t see any nerves. I didn’t see any jitters. It was the first time you’ve played in front of that many people on this kind of stage and I didn’t see anything.

“But in case there were, they should relax here because you played — we played — very well.”

And, Avent went on, “I just said it means we’ve got to win one more game,” with the implication that State would have to win one more after that, and another after that. The defeat Friday, which spoiled a fine outing from Sam Highfill and negated Alec Makarewicz’s clutch, tying two-run home run in the seventh, puts State in a difficult but not impossible position.

Teams have lost their first game in Omaha and gone onto the advance to the best-of-three championship series. They’ve gone on to win the whole thing. Oregon State did it in 2018 and 2006. South Carolina did it in between those two years, in 2010.

“I think a day off and practice (Sunday) will help kind of clear the minds and refocus,” said Highfill, who persevered through a shaky start to strike out seven in seven innings, and leave after holding a potent Kentucky offense to three runs. “And we’ve got to be ready for Monday. ...

“We all know we are capable and we deserve to be here.”

Highfill is one of four players on State’s Omaha roster who was around for what happened in 2021. They were all freshmen then, new to college baseball and suddenly they were ending their first college season in the College World Series. And then it ended not on the field but in a number of positive COVID-19 tests that forced State’s disqualification, and led to an outcry.

“I remember being in that room at 1:30 in the morning, telling the players we were going home,” Avent said here earlier in the week, when asked to reflect on 2021. “I didn’t see a dry eye or smile the entire bus ride to the airport, (the) entire flight home.”

There was nothing Avent could say then, three years ago, because it was over. There was only the pain of an opportunity lost or one stolen, depending on one’s perspective. State’s 2021 College World Series exit was among the cruelest in the history of the event, and that history is part of what has made the Wolfpack’s return here so satisfying, and special.

Every year, there are great teams that never make it to Omaha. There are great programs, like Florida State’s, for instance, that have been to Omaha again and again but have never left as champion. Baseball is fickle, even in the pros, and the whims and flaws of college players make this version of it, at the College World Series, even more fickle.

When State left here in 2021, there was no telling how soon it’d find its way back here. It took three years, it turned out, but it could’ve been five or 10 or never – or a long enough stretch that it would have come to feel like never. The rarity of these trips and how difficult it is to make them made the Wolfpack’s heartbreak Saturday all the more crushing.

But the hope is to always have a chance this late in the season. Now the Wolfpack has one more.