College baseball umpires in Greenville, North Carolina somehow managed to blow an extremely obvious call during Sunday’s Regional matchup between East Carolina and Evansville— even after review. It was a huge bummer for the Purple Aces, who have become America’s team over the last few days.
They had a chance to get back into a game that was seemingly out of reach and had that chance ripped out right from under them.
Evansville, a private school of about 2,300 in Indiana, entered the weekend as the No. 4-seed in a loaded group. Wake Forest had legitimate national championship hopes and lost two-straight games in demoralizing fashion to end its season as the No. 2-seed. A sneaky good VCU squad was the No. 3-seed. ECU is the No. 1-seed as a the host.
The Purple Aces took down the home team 4-1 on Friday to stay up in the Winner’s Bracket and beat the Rams in a 28-run game on Saturday. They needed just one more win to advance to the next round.
VCU and ECU met in an elimination game on Saturday night. The latter advanced to set up a rematch with Evansville on Sunday. If the Aces won, they advanced. If not, the two teams would meet again on Monday in a winner-take-all final. It quickly got out of hand…
However, with the Pirates up 10-4 in the bottom of the seventh, there was a chance!
Evansville loaded the bases. No outs.
All of this setup is to drive home that it was a very tense moment. Everybody outside of Greenville was pulling for the underdogs. The Cinderella story was alive.
And then it was time for the college baseball ump show!
First baseman Chase Hug ripped a ground ball up the middle. Second baseman Kip Fougerousse took off from first, pretty clearly beat East Carolina to the bag, and slid in safe. It wasn’t even that close!
He was called out.
@NCAABaseball hold this crew accountable for such an awful call pic.twitter.com/Po4ru2mMqr
— Alex Rodd (@alex_rodd) June 3, 2024
Upon review, the call stood. There was not “indisputable evidence” to overturn the ruling of OUT even though Fougerousse’s foot hit the bag before the Pirates’ shortstop had the ball in his glove.
Evansville scored two runs in the inning so not all was lost but it could should have been three. 10-6 and 10-7 is a pretty big difference. Especially in the postseason!
East Carolina won 19-6 in the end, so the egregious missed call didn’t really matter— except for momentum. Maybe that seventh inning would have stayed alive. Who knows!
The college baseball umpires made it so that we did not find out.