Bad weather is expected to hit Cary, North Carolina, on Monday. That’s the spot of the Division-II College World Series so the NCAA decided to move the two games that were scheduled for Monday to Sunday and play four games in one day.
That means U.C. San Diego’s game against Texas A&M-Kingsville had to be moved up. Way up. The Tritons and Javelinas got going at 10 in the morning, which is 7 a.m. as far as the body clocks of the California kids were concerned.
But they came in ready for anything.
“We had a plan back on Thursday when we flew here,” said Tritons head coach Eric Newman. “We talked about how we were going to grind out staying awake on a plane after getting up at 4 in the morning so that we could adapt quickly to the time change and the humidity.”
Whatever they did worked.
The Tritons won their opener 4-0 to move into a winner’s bracket game on Tuesday at a much more reasonable 7:00 p.m. in North Carolina. UCSD starter Mitch Hickey, a transfer from Oregon State who played in the Division-I College World Series, seemed right at home. Hickey struck out six in six innings.
The Tritons got a run in the first inning on a Tyler Durna RBI double. They scored again in the fourth on a passed ball and got two more in the fifth inning, the last one coming on a Shay Whitcomb RBI single.
UCSD has won 13 straight games and 23 of its last 25.
