Post Tagged with: "auburn baseball"
Trent Mummey and Hunter Morris were both taken aback Tuesday afternoon as they waited to see where they would respectively land on the second day of the Major League Baseball Draft.
Mummey was expecting to see his name scroll across the computer screen in the fourth round, and it did. Only it was the Baltimore Orioles with the 118th overall pick — a team he hadn’t made contact with in the days leading up to the draft.
“I haven’t really talked to them much,” Mummey said, “but it was exciting they took me.”
Morris, meanwhile, had his “eyebrows raised” as he waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally, Morris, the SEC’s Player of the Year, was selected 11 picks after Mummey, 129th overall, by the Milwaukee Brewers.
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There was frustration, sure. A late-innings ejection from the pitching coach, of all people, summed that up Monday night at Plainsman Park.
Yet there was still satisfaction, albeit tempered, after Auburn’s 13-7 season-ending loss to Clemson before the third capacity crowd in four days.
Minutes after Clemson first baseman Richie Shaffer pumped his fist, recorded the game’s final out and joined his teammates at the pitcher’s mound for a dog pile, Auburn’s players streamed out of the dugout and looked out toward the fans wearing Auburn orange.
They were sent off with a standing ovation.
“It means a lot,” shortstop Casey McElroy said, “to have fans believe in Auburn baseball again.”
Forty-three wins, the best offensive season in program history and oodles of hope for the future from a team that previously hadn’t even made the SEC tournament since 2003 will do that.
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Clemson coach Jack Leggett’s reaction to Auburn’s dramatic, 11-10 comeback victory was brief and to the point.
Second baseman Mike Freeman had a similar reaction.
“The only thing we can do,” Freeman said, “is flush it.”
Clemson went from the driver’s seat in this NCAA regional to behind a tidal wave of momentum that Auburn will try to carry into tonight’s game at Plainsman Park.
“I don’t think it will be that difficult,” Freeman said. “Our guys have been there before.”
The majority of Clemson’s players have, in fact, been in this situation before – only they were in Auburn’s position. Clemson, which hosted a regional at its home park last season, lost the second game to Oklahoma State, 3-2. After defeating Tennessee Tech in the losers’ bracket championship, the Tigers routed the Cowboys on the same day before advancing to the Super Regionals with a 6-5 victory over Oklahoma State.
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Creede Simpson’s fingers flickered on the handle of his bat as Clemson’s Tomas Cruz stared him down, one strike away from sending the visitors to its ninth NCAA Super Regional.
The 20-year-old, born and raised in the shadows of Plainsman Park, had no idea he was about to hit one of the most memorable home runs in the program’s history, one that would ultimately send Auburn past Clemson, 11-10, and on to a winner-take-all regional championship game tonight at 6 p.m.
Faced with two strikes, two outs, two runners on base and Auburn trailing by a run, Simpson was just trying to keep the game going with a little contact.
“I was just trying to get the barrel on the ball,” Simpson said. “I knew I had a great opportunity, I didn’t want to waste it.”
He sure didn’t.
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