It’s been 73 years since Tennessee has played in the College World Series Finals and Texas A&M’s first CWS appearance and both are still hunting for their first title. The mood ahead of game 2 of the College World Series is completely different for Tennessee and Texas A&M.

The Volunteers have their back against the wall with the season on the line and their first baseball national championship moving out of reach. As for the Aggies, their first national championship is the closest it’s ever been, one win away. Pregame, Tennessee was dialed and locked in, all with determination and ever so focused. As for Texas A&M, the energy was more loosely focused and not tense, but still knowing the job isn’t finished just yet.

The Aggies started things almost exactly like they did in game one, but this time it was Jace LaViolette who blasted a solo homer in the 1st inning to put A&M on the board early and that was the only run for the next 6 innings. The reason for that being Drew Beam shut down the Aggies after that only run he scored over the course of his 4 innings. Beam followed up his strong start vs North Carolina with another stout outing, this time against a powerful Volunteer lineup which set the tone for the game.

Then, Aaron Combs came in and silenced the Aggies offense as well over 4 innings only allowing three hits. He spoke about his pitching coach, Frank Anderson, and what he means to him.

“Yeah, he's been a huge help. He's really made sure I've locked in, and he kind of preaches that just gotta do your job. And it kind of makes me focus on the game instead of everything that comes around it. I mean, there's a lot of A&M fans that are trying to ball-5 me, so (laughter). It helps me lock back into the game when stuff like that happens, just knowing the mentality that he's given me.” Tony Vitello then added in “He also wants to be coached. And I mean, he says he's available tomorrow. So maybe it's premature, but one of my favorite guys to coach. He's just awesome, man. He's got that stupid chuckle, and obviously he's got some talent. But he's so receptive to anything that you bring to him, and he's so easy to have a conversation. And he's got a real good balance of believing in himself, which these kids all see swagger and they listen to rap songs and stuff like that. So they have their chest out. But there's got to be a decent combination there. Combsy is fun as hell. He'd be a fun hang, but I guess I'm too old.”

On the other side, after Texas A&M opened with Zane Badmaev, they went right to one of their best arms in Chris Cortez who was fresh after not being needed in game one. Outside of 5 walks, Cortez was incredible for the Aggies and left the bases loaded twice in just over 4 innings of 2-hit work and didn’t allow a run on a season high, 99 pitches.

Tennessee head coach, Tony Vitello said this postgame about not getting frustrated when opportunities slip away.

“It's a delicate balance, because we had bases loaded twice, I believe, and didn't have anything to show for it. If you look at those at-bats, two of our best guys didn't necessarily look themselves. And I think it was probably because there's a little extra tension or a little extra try-hard. But it's kind of hard to not have that. And also Cortez is really good. So there were a couple times where it's, like, hey, we need to relax or change the mojo a little bit. But it was kind of the flow of the game. There's usually a flow to a game, even in the postseason, where it's chaos. And it was challenging for us.”

Until the 7th, Tennessee was horrible with runners in scoring position and left 8 men on. But Dylan Dreiling delivered a monster 2-run homer in the 7th to give the Volunteers the lead on a 1-1 fastball up over the heart of the plate.

Cal Stark said this about Dreiling, “He's already a quiet kid, but I think his heart just kind of stays calm, his mind stays calm. And I feel like he's kind of built for those moments. He's done it all year. So let's hope he can continue doing that.”

And speaking of Stark, he delivered some insurance in the 8th, crushing a 2 out, 2-run homer on a 2-2 slider right into his bat path to make it 4-1.

It was his first hit here at the College World Series and he said “It felt pretty good, finally getting that first hit out of the way, whatever. Every kid dreams about playing at this stage. And being able to do that late in the game like that, it was pretty cool and something I'll never forget. And then I feel like it just kind of kept us rolling momentum-wise. And I think that was in the eighth inning, so it just kind of set the tone for the ninth.”

As for the 9th, I asked Coach Tony Vitello about the strategy of going to Kirby when he did, and then making a quick move to Nate Snead who was able to close it out.

“The Combs decision was tough. Again, we wouldn't be in this position without him. If you took a vote in the dugout, which sometimes you do or sometimes you just have to take responsibility for decisions like the bunt. You can feel free to ask me about. And it was split. It was split in the dugout. And then he comes down and says, I'm fine. What are you going to do? I think if you're a Vol fan, you probably boo the coaching staff if you don't see that guy come out of the dugout. But I'm not so sure that he wasn't on fumes there. So just to peel back the curtain, what we talked about to the bullpen was this is going to be a three-man effort no matter what to finish the inning. In the ideal world, Combsy gets a guy, and we might have went to Kirby anyway for the match-up. And Snead was hot to come in. And we've been telling him that he was going to finish the game. I don't know that it's exactly like that, but kind of shades of Vanderbilt. We typically had been using Snead on Sundays. And I think that's a game where Snead came in and got the two outs. And today he had to get three.”

Snead did just that and secured the win for Tennessee which sets up a winner-take-all game 3 Monday night where we will see either Tennessee or Texas A&M claim their first national championship on the diamond in program history.

73 years brewing…what’s one more day with everything on the line?