As I mentioned, the regional experience wasn't so much about the level of competition as it was about the team atmosphere.
We didn't expect to get a bid at all. In fact, we had already packed up our locker room and said goodbye to the seniors after the conference tournament. I was focused on my finals and then getting down to my summer team on the report date to get the next step of the baseball life started.
Our ace last year was 1st Team All-America and a 4th round draft pick by the Braves. We were the #3 seed, and the #6 seed was a team we'd played at their place earlier on in the season. Their coach is a former MLB player and obviously had a gameplan against our ace. Their approach, combined with a little bit of control issues, combined with some shotty defense, and we lost. It was his first loss of the year and we were absolutely shell-shocked. We were suddenly in the loser's bracket, and didn't have our go-to guy available until at least Sunday.
Our second game was against a conference opponent who'd beaten us three times during the season. It was a slugfest that involved six lead changes, but in the end we won the game 11-9. Our third and fourth games were against other opponents we'd never played before, and we had a great combination of timely hitting and clutch pitching performances to be able to pull those out as well.
By time Saturday rolled around, our confidence had been built back up. We were in the loser's bracket championship game against a team who we'd split with during the season. Their ace (who was ironically also drafted by the Braves, in the middle rounds) was unavailable.
As CD said, we lost the game on a walk-off single in the 11th inning, 6-5. The team that beat us ended up losing the championship round on another walk-off, and the team that won the region ended up losing to Smokey's team in the National Championship game.
Regardless if I'd thrown 0 innings or a perfect game in the regionals, the experience was second-to-none. I watched an interview with Huston Street once who said that the most fun he ever had on a baseball field was when he played at the University of Texas because all the guys were there simply because they loved playing the game. I think that playing at a competitive level in DIII ball takes that perspective to a whole different level, because truthfully, not a whole lot of players are going to move on to the next level. The game is pure, fun, and emotional.
I'd love for Smokey to chime in here as well. His sentiments were great to read throughout the CWS and certainly painted a great picture of how magical a winning run is at the collegiate level.