Late night fun earns day off for Beavers.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

OMAHA, Neb. - Oregon State arrived early Monday and stayed late. They endured a 90-minute delay in the starting time of their game, caused by the longest game in College World Series history.

They had a shortened warmup on the field, and they were up against an Arizona State team that a month ago swept the Beavers in Corvallis.

Oh, well.

The Beavers shrugged it all off, kept swinging their bats for 18 hits - including home runs by Mike Lissman and Jordan Lennerton - and emerged with a 12-6 victory over the Sun Devils as 21,692 in Rosenblatt Stadium were reminded which team won the national title a year ago.

`I'd been saying we needed to get punched in the mouth. We got punched in the mouth,' ASU coach Pat Murphy said. `I always thought Oregon State was a good club.'

The victory over the Pac-10 champions earned the Beavers (46-18) today off. They will next play Wednesday at 4 p.m. PDT against either ASU (49-14) or UC Irvine (46-16-1). Those two teams meet today, with the survivor needing to beat OSU both Wednesday and Thursday to advance to Saturday's start to the best-of-three championship series.

Day off? The Beavers sounded like they would have rather played again, even if it was nearing midnight local time as they met the media.

`I don't think playing every day affects us,' OSU shortstop Darwin Barney said. `I think the day off will be relaxing, but we're really not thinking of it as a day off. We're thinking of it as a day to prepare.'

Only Rice and the Beavers are 2-0 in the College World Series, have no game today, and need only one more win to reach the title series. It's the opposite of last season, when the Beavers had to win on four consecutive days of elimination games to reach the final weekend.

`I'm going to approach it the same as I do every game,' OSU coach Pat Casey said of this year's contrasting schedule. `Take it one pitch at a time, take it one inning at a time and keep the throttle down.'

It was certainly full-speed ahead Monday, even after that delay. While ASU's Murphy and his players bemoaned being thrown off in their preparation by the long-running game in front of the Pac-10 matchup, the Beavers couldn't find any reason to think it mattered in the least.

`If Arizona State couldn't do that, good for us,' Barney said.

Whether it was that or the fact the Beavers are back in their comfort zone at the College World Series, where they've won eight of their last nine games over two years, it was certainly a reversal of form from the last time the two teams met.

In being swept by ASU a month ago in Corvallis, the Beavers scored four runs on nine hits. Total. In three games. They scored seven runs on 10 hits in the first three innings Monday night.

It was an offensive show for the Beavers from the opening batter. Chris Hopkins singled to center, and he had three hits by the third inning. Barney scored runs in each of the first two innings.

Lissman singled in a run in the first inning, and drove in three more in the second with his 10th homer of the season. Lennerton went the opposite way to the front row of the left-field bleachers in the third for his eighth homer of the season, and it was 7-1 after three.

The OSU line on the scoreboard had the look of a telephone number, area code 241 as ASU came to bat in the fourth inning trying to find an answer.

`To get on the board early really helped us,' Casey said. `I was extremely happy with the way we got going early.'

By the fifth inning, every Beaver starter had a hit except catcher Mitch Canham. Lonnie Lechelt, the No. 9 hitter, struck out his first two times up and then doubled and tripled the next two.

All of that was needed when OSU started Mike Stutes tired in the seventh and loaded the bases with two walks wrapped around a single, only the third hit he allowed. He was lifted after 106 pitches, and those three runners he put on came around to score.

`I guess I just ran out of gas,' Stutes said. Before that, he said, `I tried to get ahead of them and just keep them off balance.'

The Sun Devils made it a little uneasy for the Beavers before the third OSU reliever of the seventh inning, Joe Paterson, quelled the rally though the margin was cut to 12-5. Paterson finished up by striking out the side in both the eighth and ninth innings, and the Beavers had more than evened things up for that dismal performance last time the teams played each other.

`We're not the same club we were when we faced them the last time,' Barney said.