North Carolina reaches championship round

OMAHA, Neb. -- Jay Cox homered twice and made a great catch in the ninth inning to help North Carolina move to the College World Series championship round with a 6-5 victory over Cal State Fullerton on Wednesday night.

The Tar Heels (53-13) won Bracket 1 and will play either Rice or Oregon State in the best-of-three final beginning Saturday. Those two teams met later Wednesday, with Rice needing one victory to win Bracket 2. Oregon State would have to beat the Owls twice to reach the final.

North Carolina, which defeated Fullerton 7-5 in 13 innings on Friday, won a rematch that featured 27 hits in what was an anticipated pitcher's duel between Carolina's Daniel Bard and the Titans' Wes Roemer.

Bard (9-3), a first-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox, gave up a career-high 12 hits in six innings.

Roemer (13-2) allowed six runs on 10 hits in 4 1/3 innings, the shortest of his 30 career starts. The Big West pitcher of the year gave up both of Cox's homers and another by Tim Federowicz.

After allowing three home runs in 16 regular-season starts, Roemer surrendered six in four NCAA tournament starts. He gave up two in his first CWS start against the Tar Heels.

Cox's three-run homer in the third inning put Carolina up 4-2. He and Federowicz hit back-to-back homers in the fifth -- the first consecutive homers in the CWS since Missouri State's Greg Mathis and Jacob Hilgendorf did it in 2003 -- to give the Tar Heels a 6-3 lead.

Bard left in the seventh after Brett Pill doubled and Danny Dorn singled. David Cooper's single off John Estes and pinch-hitter Cory Vanderhook's sacrifice fly pulled Fullerton to 6-5.

The Titans (50-15) tried to tie it after John Curtis doubled leading off the eighth and moved to third on a groundout. Curtis took off for home on a suicide squeeze but was thrown out when reliever Andrew Carignan picked up Blake Davis' bunt in front of the mound.

The Titans, who had come from behind to win their previous two games, stood at the top of the dugout steps in the bottom of the ninth, hats backward and linked with their arms behind each others' backs.

After Cox crashed into the wall in left field when he caught Cooper's fly for the second out, first-round draft pick Andrew Miller came on for his first relief appearance since 2004. Miller earned the save by getting pinch-hitter Bryan Harris on a soft grounder to shortstop for the final out.