UC Irvine keeps dream alive

~ The Anteaters and Tar Heels won to keep their seasons alive.

OMAHA, Neb. -- That team with a funny nickname is serious about winning a national championship.

The UC Irvine Anteaters won in their final at-bat for the third time in four games Tuesday night, knocking off Arizona State 8-7 in 10 innings in an elimination game at the College World Series.

The hero this time was Ollie Linton, whose bases-loaded single completed their comeback from four runs down in the eighth inning and extended their first appearance in the CWS.

So after beating Texas in the regionals, Wichita State in the super regionals and neighborhood rival Cal State Fullerton and then Arizona State in the CWS, the Anteaters now take aim at defending national champion Oregon State.

The Anteaters (47-16-1) must beat the Beavers today and again Thursday to win their bracket and reach the best-of-three championship round.

"The 2007 UC Irvine Anteaters don't want to take their uniforms off," coach Dave Serrano said. "It's going to take someone to do something special to eliminate us from this. We've had seven victories in the postseason, and each one has gotten better."

UC Irvine became the first team in the CWS' 61-year history to win extra-inning games on consecutive days. They beat Cal State Fullerton 5-4 in 13 innings Monday in a 5-hour, 40-minute game, the longest in CWS history.

"I said yesterday was one of the best games I've ever been a part of, not realizing today would top that," Serrano said.

Matt Morris singled, Bryan Petersen was intentionally walked and Sean Madigan singled to load the bases with one out in the 10th against ASU reliever Mike Leake.

The pro-Irvine crowd began chanting "Let's Go Eaters" as Linton walked to the plate. After he sent Leake's 2-2 pitch into right field to break the 7-7 tie, then was mobbed by teammates near first base as the fans' chants turned to "Oll-ie, Oll-ie."

"Before I got to the plate, coach Serrano told me if Madigan wasn't going to do it right here, I would do it," Linton said. "All I could think was positive thoughts. He got me out the time before, and he tried to bust me in with a curve that he got me with in my previous at-bat. He left it a little high, I fought it, and the ball got through."

North Carolina 3, Louisville 1

North Carolina is proving the adage that good pitching beats good hitting any day.

The Tar Heels' starters had been anything but good the last two weeks, and Louisville had the hottest hitting team in the NCAA tournament.

But Luke Putkonen and two relievers limited the Cardinals to three hits, and the Tar Heels won in an elimination game.

The Tar Heels also had three hits but they made two runs that scored on a Louisville throwing error stand up to advance to a game against Rice today. North Carolina (55-14), the 2006 runner-up, would have to beat the Owls twice to win their bracket and return to the best-of-three championship series, which starts Saturday.

Rice beat the Tar Heels 14-4 the first time they played Sunday.

"This game is crazy," North Carolina coach Mike Fox said. "You can go from a game where you score a lot of runs to none, because it's all controlled by that guy on the mound. I have a great deal of confidence in Luke. When he's on, he has as good a stuff as anybody."

The Cardinals (47-24), who had batted .402 and scored 22 runs in their first two games, ended their first trip to the CWS with their fewest hits since getting three in a loss to St. John's on May 5. They scored their fewest runs since a loss to Rutgers on May 25.

"Everybody putting in good at-bats for a long time is a hard thing," said Louisville's Logan Johnson, whose first-inning homer was his CWS record-tying fourth in three games. "We ran into a good club and they pitched well. Things didn't go our way."

It was the second straight year that a team had three hits in a victory -- Oregon State did it in a 2-0 win over Rice. In the CWS's 61-year history, only one team has won with fewer hits. That was Southern California, which had two in a 5-3 win over BYU in 1968.

Before Tuesday, no team in Fox's nine years at North Carolina had won with so few.