College World Series 2021: Pairings, Game Times, TV and More
Updated Wednesday, June 30, 11 p.m. ET
Mississippi State flipped the script on Wednesday and won the College World Series with dominant pitching and timely hitting, routing SEC rival Vanderbilt 9-0 to win its first-ever national championship in any sport.
Bulldogs pitchers Will Bednar (9-1) and Landon Sims were the stars. Pitching on just three days' rest, Bednar pitched six no-hit innings. Sims finished off the Commodores with three scoreless innings of his own, allowing just one hit and combining for the greatest pitching performance ever in a championship-deciding game.
"Every time he's taken the ball here in the postseason, he's just been a champ," Mississippi State coach Chris Lemonis said. "You need somebody to get hot for you in the postseason, and we had that with Will tonight.''
Mississippi State has been a college baseball powerhouse for years, but they've never been able to close out the deal in Omaha. That changed Wednesday night, and they were led by Lemonis, who was hired away from Indiana in 2018 for exactly this kind of moment, winning a College World Series after failing on the grandest stage on their first 11 trips to the finals.
"When you're going to do something legendary for the first time, it was going to have to be tough," Lemonis said. "The reason we are champions is we just have a really tough, resilient group. It's been built over time. It's the accumulation of the last three years."
The Bulldogs' hitters roughed up Vanderbilt ace Kumar Rocker, scoring a run in the first, two more in the second and then knocking him out in the fifth with two more runs. Rocker is expected to be a top-10 pick in the MLB draft in a few weeks, but the Bulldogs didn't care.
They were patient at the plate, laying off of breaking balls out of the zone and hitting first-pitch fastballs hard. Rocker gave up six hits and five runs, four earned, in his 4 1/3 innings of work.
Here are all the results from the 2021 College World Series:
Saturday, June 19
- Game 1: N.C. State 10, No. 9 Stanford 4
- Game 2: No. 4 Vanderbilt 7, No. 5 Arizona 6, 12 innings
Sunday, June 20
- Game 3: Virginia 6, No. 3 Tennessee 0
- Game 4: No. 7 Mississippi State 2, No. 2 Texas 1
Monday, June 21
- Game 5: Stanford 14, Arizona 5 (Arizona eliminated)
- Game 6: N.C. State 1, Vanderbilt 0
Tuesday, June 22
- Game 7: Texas 8, Tennessee 4 (Tennessee eliminated)
- Game 8: Mississippi State 6, Virginia 5
Wednesday, June 23
- Game 9: Vanderbilt 6, Stanford 5 (Stanford eliminated)
Thursday, June 24
- Game 10: Texas 6, Virginia 2 (Virginia eliminated)
Friday, June 25
- Game 11: Vanderbilt 3, N.C. State 1
- Game 12: Texas 8, Mississippi State 5
Saturday, June 26
- Game 13: N.C. State (37-19) vs, Vanderbilt (48-16), ruled no contest. (N.C. State eliminated due to COVID-19 protocols)
- Game 14: Mississippi State 4, Texas 3 (Texas eliminated)
Monday, June 28
CWS Finals (Best-of-3 series)
- Game 1: Vanderbilt 8, Mississippi State 2. (Vanderbilt leads series, 1-0)
Tuesday, June 29
CWS Finals (Best-of-3 series)
- Game 2: Mississippi State 13, Vanderbilt 2 (Series tied 1-1)
Wednesday, June 30
CWS Finals (Best-of-3 series)
- Game 3: Mississippi State 9, Vanderbilt 0 (Vanderbilt eliminated; Mississippi State is national champion)
Regional, Super Regional results
- For a complete look back on all of the regional and Super Regional scores over the past two weeks, CLICK HERE