Unlikely success story in Omaha

Louisville had just one NCAA tournament appearance before this season.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The T-shirt had been sitting in the back of Zack Pitts’ closet for a while, a relic from a baseball camp he attended at Louisville one summer during high school.

Black with a big red ‘L’ and a baseball on the front and the phrase “Destination Omaha” written in white on the back, Pitts wore it for some time, then put it away when it got too small for his 6-foot-3 frame. Pitts said he didn’t wonder about the ambitious motto on the back until after he signed with the Cardinals a couple of years ago.

“Thinking about it, you’re like ‘Destination Omaha’? Louisville’s never won a game in a regional. Who’d have thought they could go to Omaha?” the junior pitcher said.

Nobody, really.

Not even the Cardinals, at least not until the giddy final out of their super regional clinching 20-2 win over Oklahoma State Sunday.

Suddenly Louisville — home of basketball and football but not much else — was going to Omaha, Neb., as the unlikeliest entry in this year’s College World Series.

The Cardinals (46-22) open the tournament against Rice (54-12) Friday.

“Somebody had a dream and it happened,” Pitts said.

“It’s awesome. Our team is pretty amazing.”

Pretty good, too.

The Cardinals have ridden the power of a nearly unstoppable offense, solid pitching and the aggressive attitude of first-year coach Dan McDonnell to college baseball’s biggest stage.

Not bad for a school that had just one NCAA tournament appearance and zero tournament victories in the program’s nearly 100-year history.

But the Cardinals have hardly looked like postseason newcomers during this year’s tournament.

They’re averaging nearly 10 runs a game and haven’t been intimidated by the more traditional powers they’ve faced.

Magical run

In the span of eight tournament games the Cardinals have knocked out Miami (Fla.), Missouri and Oklahoma State, doing it with equal parts drama and domination.

They took delight in quieting a hostile crowd in beating the Tigers 4-3 and 16-6 to win the regional, and seemed to thrive off the unprecedented attention they received in the super regional against the Cowboys.

With 1,500 extra bleachers brought into Jim Patterson Stadium for the weekend, the Cardinals dominated the opener 9-0 and led 2-1 in the ninth in the second game in the best-of-3 series.

An inning away from advancing, they stumbled.

The Cowboys tied it on a homer in the top of the ninth and then won it in the 12th, a loss that McDonnell admits had him worried about his team ‘what-ifing’ itself right out of the series.

“I told them it’s easy to think, ‘Yeah, we were only three outs away from Omaha,’ ” McDonnell said.

“I challenged them as soon as the game was over that it does you no good to think like that. I told them to push the thoughts out. I told them, ‘You guys are the greatest club that’s ever played at Louisville, and come out and enjoy it.’ ”

The Cardinals played like it on Sunday, pounding the Cowboys from the first pitch to set off a postgame celebration that seemed unthinkable a month ago.

“It’s still a little bit unreal,” said third baseman Chris Dominguez. “But I’ll tell you what, we’re playing pretty good. The way we’ve been playing, anything can happen.”