TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The game ended at 1:30 in the morning. Four hours and six minutes after first pitch. Northern Illinois celebrating on the field at Dick Howser Stadium while Coastal Carolina's season dangled by a thread.
NIU had never won an NCAA Tournament game in program history. Their last appearance was 1972. Friday night, in their first tournament game in 54 years, they beat the team that played for the national championship last June by two runs.
The game turned in the fourth inning and it turned fast. Coastal Carolina had built a 4-0 lead through two innings, looking exactly like a top seed is supposed to look. Then Northern Illinois sent 12 batters to the plate in the fourth inning. Five hits. Three walks. A hit batter. A Coastal Carolina error. Eight runs. By the time the inning was over the scoreboard read 10-4 Huskies and the stunned crowd at Howser Stadium was trying to process what had just happened.
Coastal fought back because that is what Coastal Carolina baseball does. They chipped away all night. In the ninth inning, down 12-7 with their season circling the drain, Dean Mihos hit a three-run homer to make it 12-10 and put the tying run at the plate with two outs. NIU closer Carter Cox then struck out Rex Watson looking, got a lineout to first, and that was the ballgame.
NIU coach Ryan Copeland said it plainly after the final out: "This was just a remarkable baseball game. It took three weekend starters and one of our better relievers. As we've done all year, we were resilient and tough and found a way to battle back. You have to win game one of a regional. You gotta win."
His team went 1-for-0 in NCAA Tournament history entering Friday. They are 1-for-1 now.
The chaos in Tallahassee didn't stop there. Florida State, the No. 10 national seed and regional host, blew a late lead and lost 6-5 to St. John's in the other Friday opener. Both the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the same regional lost on opening day. That has happened before but it never gets less stunning when it does. FSU and Coastal Carolina, two programs that expected to be playing for a regional title on Sunday, will instead meet Saturday afternoon in an elimination game where one of them goes home. The loser of FSU vs. Coastal Carolina doesn't make it to Super Regionals. That's it. That's the whole sentence.
Northern Illinois, meanwhile, faces St. John's at 7 p.m. Saturday with a chance to go 2-0 in their first tournament appearance since the Nixon administration. If they win that one, they host the regional final. The Huskies are 16-0 this season when scoring 10 or more runs. They scored 12 on Friday night.
The full picture of what programs like FSU and Coastal Carolina invest to build their rosters versus what Northern Illinois spends is at https://thesideline.co/nil-tracker. The gap is enormous. It did not matter at 1:30 this morning.
College baseball's regional weekend is only one day old. It already broke everything.