By Harry Minium
Norfolk, Va.
It has been an extraordinary season for the Old Dominion University baseball team, and yet there is so much more this team could accomplish.
Let's face it, ODU doesn't offer the facilities, with all the bells and whistles, of some Power 5 programs. The Monarchs watched Sunday's NCAA tournament pairings show on a 17-hour bus ride back from Ruston, Louisiana, where ODU won its first Conference USA tournament.
"We were watching on our laptops and our phones while eating Burger King," shortstop Tommy Bell said. "That's us, though. That's Old Dominion baseball right there. We're blue collar."
The Monarchs bused back in one night to meet with their fans at Hank's Filling Station restaurant. Blue collar? The Monarchs had barbecue, brisket and coleslaw as they were feted by ODU followers.
And this is a team with an unusually close camaraderie that has put itself into a position to perhaps punch its ticket to the College Baseball World Series in Omaha.
The NCAA Tournament committee seeded ODU 11th nationally and sent the Monarchs to Columbia, South Carolina as a No. 1 seed. ODU was eighth in the final NCAA RPI rankings.
Think about it: the Monarchs are rated ahead of Florida State, ACC champion Duke, Ole Miss, UCLA, North Carolina and Miami, and, of course, both South Carolina and Virginia.
U.Va., the No. 3 seed, and South Carolina, the No. 2 seed, will play in the Columbia regional on Friday at noon. ODU takes on Jacksonville, which won the ASUN Conference Tournament in spite of a 16-32 record, in the nightcap at 7 (ESPN3).
If ODU wins, it meets the winner of the Virginia-South Carolina game on Saturday in a double-elimination bracket that ends with the championship Monday night.
The winner of the Columbia regional goes on to meet the winner of the Ft. Worth regional hosted by TCU which is 40-17, won the Big 12 tournament and is seeded sixth nationally. If TCU wins, the Horned Frogs will host a Super Regional.
Win two out of three in the Super Regional and you're among eight teams headed to the World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
Difficult? Yes. South Carolina has won two national titles in the last decade and U.Va. one. Both have also been World Series runners-up in the last decade as well.
And at some point, the Monarchs almost surely will play South Carolina in front of a big, hostile crowd. South Carolina finished 16-14 in the SEC, which is dominant in college baseball and put nine teams in the tournament.
Virginia is a very talented team that played itself off the bubble by winning seven of its last nine games. There are few programs in the country as consistently excellent as U.Va.
And Jacksonville, in spite of its record, won three consecutive games in the ASUN tournament.
But this ODU team is so close, and plays so calmly under pressure, that I don't think it's farfetched to think the Monarchs could end up in the biggest event in college baseball.
The Monarchs (42-14) have won seven in a row and 10 of their last 11, and beat Louisiana Tech three times in the last 13 days on LA Tech's home field. As a No. 16 seed, LA Tech is hosting its first regional ever.
The Monarchs have built themselves something of a national following not only because of their blue collar bonafides but because of their powerful bats. The Monarchs lead the nation with 101 home runs. And the media have become interested in the compelling story of coach Chris Finwood, who lost his wife to pancreatic cancer two months ago.
Finwood said his players came to his aid.
"These kids just rallied around me, they lifted me up," Finwood said. "This is a very special group of guys. I've never coached a team like this."
The Monarchs rallied to beat Florida Atlantic in the third game of the C-USA Tournament with seven home runs, then advanced to the final, where they were constantly razzed by a partisan and noisy Louisiana Tech home crowd.
Bell rallied ODU from an early deficit with a three-run home run. And then Robbie Petracci seemingly did the impossible when he hit a home run that cleared the center field fence by what seemed like a football field.
Petracci tore an ACL last month, but had taken batting practice in the last few weeks and was fitted for a brace. When called on by Finwood to go out and hit a home run, he did.
Then after LA Tech rallied in the bottom of the ninth to tie the score, Kyle Battle hit a two-run shot that gave the Monarchs a 7-5 victory.
The Monarchs don't wither when the pressure is on.
"These guys love each other and they fight like crazy for each other," Finwood said. "Sometimes I look out there and see Matt Coutney out there with a banged up knee and Tommy Bell with a banged up back. There were weeks when they couldn't practice. But they were not going to not play.
"They leaned on each other. There's a lot of connectedness with this group."
Finwood said the team was disheartened when ODU was left out of the 2017 NCAA tournament. This year, he thinks the NCAA committee got it right.
"For a mid-major to be a top 11 seed and a No. 1 seed in a regional, that's unusual," he said. "That usually go to the blue bloods.
"That says the committee valued our season, and all the numbers we put up and who we put them up against. It's nice to get some recognition for that, especially when we felt we got disrespected a little bit in 2017."
ODU Athletic Director Wood Selig watched the on-field celebration from the LA Tech press box, where he was doing color commentary with radio voice Ted Alexander. It was an emotional moment for him.
He hired Finwood at Western Kentucky, and then hired him at ODU a decade ago. He is close with the Finwood family and knows how much his coach suffered this season.
"For me, it was almost a sense of relief for him," Dr. Selig said. "Because I think outside of his family, nothing is more important to him than this baseball program.
"Dealing with as much adversity as he did this year with his wife's death, it was so nice to see him with the championship trophy. He went through an extreme low but thank goodness he had an extreme high.
"And I don't think we're done yet. This is one of those magical seasons I hope we find a way to keep it going."
Battle said the team's first goal this season was to win the league title. It's second goal? To make it to Omaha.
"It's going to be tough," he said. "Playoff baseball can be a menace. But we see now who's in our way to get there.
"I'll take this group of guys over any team in the nation. I'm excited. We've going to go to work and go out and play and see what happens."
Minium worked 39 years at The Virginian-Pilot, where he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won 27 state and national writing awards. He writes news stories, features and commentaries for odusports.com and odu.edu Follow him on Twitter @Harry_MiniumODU, Instagram @hbminium1 or email hminium@odu.edu
Minium: ODU is a Blue Collar, Close-Knit Team That Could Play Its Way to Omaha
