Repeat? Easier said than done.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

OMAHA, Neb. - Getting back here was one thing for Oregon State. But back-to-back titles for the Beavers, too?

Their sometimes improbable and now seemingly inevitable quest to repeat as national champions is down to a best-of-three series against North Carolina (57-14), the team the Beavers (47-18) beat for the title last year, with the opening pitch of the first game set for today at 4 p.m. PDT at Rosenblatt Stadium. The second game is Sunday, with a third game, if necessary, on Monday.

The Beavers are rested, relaxed and sounding ready to repeat.

`I feel like it's going to take something pretty special to help spurt past what we've got going,' OSU shortstop Darwin Barney said. `We've got confidence, we've got the edge, we've got the swagger. If we pitch and defend, we'll be in every game and give ourselves a chance to win.'

And who ever thought that back when the Beavers were trying to save their year as the regular season wound down, and simply earn a berth in the NCAA tournament?

`I don't know what the odds were three weeks ago, but I'm sure there are a couple guys pretty happy they bet on the Beavs,' OSU coach Pat Casey said.

Since then, it's been a losing wager to go against OSU.

The team that finished tied for sixth in the Pac-10 and has gone 9-1 in the postseason. The Beavers are 3-0 at the College World Series and have won by a cumulative score of 22-9.

The defending champions have looked just that.

`We call it comfortable and confident,' Casey said. `There's no way you're comfortable if you're not confident, and you're confident if you're prepared.'

Casey said the Beavers are playing so well here because they're simply playing it `one inning at a time, one game at a time,' as if it were any other date on the schedule, and this is simply a culmination of the lessons he began teaching way back in September when fall workouts began.

`People may try to do things differently because they're in the College World Series,' Casey said. `I just think you do the things the way you've done them all year long.'

It's been `Clockwork Orange,' as the local newspaper headlined of the latest win for the Beavers. OSU's three starting pitchers have worked 22 of the 27 innings and allowed six earned runs. The offense is hitting .333 in Omaha with five homers. The defense has committed but two errors.

If there's any pressure in that air around here that could be sliced with a knife, the Beavers haven't seemed to notice.

`All around we glow with confidence,' catcher Mitch Canham said. `We know what we're capable of doing.'

Bold talk, but it is, after all, the third consecutive trip to Omaha for the Beavers. Over the past 20 years, only Miami, Stanford and Texas made more consecutive trips to Rosenblatt than that.

The Beavers went 0-2 two years ago, then battled their way to six wins in elimination games in '06 to claim the school's first baseball title, and second NCAA championship in any sport for the school. It was a remarkable feat, a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment, except now OSU might do it again.

Is this team as good as the OSU team that won it all 12 months ago? Oh, probably not, but these Beavers don't have to beat those Beavers. The challenge is North Carolina, which also happens to be the team OSU defeated last year despite losing the first game of the title series.

It's only the second time in the 61 years of this event that there has been a repeat matchup for the championship. The previous time was 1973, when USC - in a string of five consecutive titles - beat Arizona State as it did in '72.

North Carolina coach Mike Fox said he'd been told the chances of the same two teams playing for the title in consecutive years was `something like 273 to the sixth power. That's astronomical.'

There are odds against the Beavers repeating, of course. Other than that remarkable string by USC from 1970 through '74, the only back-to-back baseball champions have been Texas in 1949 and '50, Stanford in 1987 and '88, and LSU in 1996 and '97.

Why not since? The field for the tournament has continually expanded. The round of Super Regionals has been added. Rules and scholarship limits have made it feasible for more schools to contend.

Skip Bertman, the last coach to lead his team to consecutive titles, told the Omaha World-Herald earlier this week that `baseball is the poster sport for parity. ... I don't think we'll see the dynasties anymore.'

The Beavers aren't asking for that designation. Repeating would be enough.

OSU hasn't played since Wednesday, and never played on consecutive days in sweeping through its bracket. The Tar Heels, meanwhile, took OSU's route of last year with an early loss that forced North Carolina to win on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to reach the title series.

While OSU's rotation is set with freshman Jorge Reyes (6-3, 3.00 ERA) today and ace Mike Stutes (11-4, 4.03) on Sunday in the same order they were for the Super Regionals and the first two games here - and both are well rested - the Tar Heels will be forced into using No. 3 starter Alex White (6-6, 4.74 ERA), who was battered for six runs in 1 2/3 innings by Rice last Sunday.

North Carolina's second starter is listed as Luke Putkonen (8-1, 4.44) with all-American Robert Woodard (11-2, 3.19) likely not available unless a Monday game is played.

On the other hand, the roles were reversed in last year's title series, with the Tar Heels rested and the Beavers in a mad scramble to reform their pitching staff, and look what happened. The Beavers won the title, setting up this weekend's opportunity for a rare repeat.

This time around, maybe the Beavers are simply in a better position to do what they did last year.

`Everything is there for this club to win a championship,' Barney said.

`It's just a matter of getting it done.'

PAST REPEATERS

IN OMAHA

Previous instances in which a team has won consecutive College World Series titles

1949-50 Texas

1970-74 USC

1987-88 Stanford

1996-97 LSU

ALMOST THERE

IS RARE, TOO

The only seasons in which the defending national champion finished second the following year:

1978: Arizona State, lost to USC

NORTHERN WINNERS

National baseball champions that came from the northern half of the United States 

1952: Holy Cross

1953: Michigan

1954: Missouri

1956: Minnesota

1960: Minnesota

1962: Michigan

1964: Minnesota

1966: Ohio State

2006: Oregon State

OSU'S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TEAMS

1926: Wrestling*

1961: Men's cross country

2006: Baseball

*Not then an NCAA sport; Beavers won AAU national title, competing against other colleges and clubs.

Comparing the OSU baseball team of 2006 to 2007, with two or three games remaining for the current team:

2006 2007

Pac-10 finish First Sixth (tie)

Pac-10 record 16-7 10-14

Overall record 50-16 47-18

NCAA regionals 5-0 6-1

World Series 6-2 3-0

Batting average .302 .285

Home runs 36 43

Pitching ERA 3.41 3.48

Drafted players 9 8