The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, at 56-11, have the most wins in Division I baseball this season. They are riding an incredible 26-game winning streak.
Now they are two wins away from their second national championship.
The 13th-seeded Chanticleers dispatched the Louisville Cardinals on Wednesday, 11-3, to advance to their second College World Series finals. Their first visit in 2016 resulted in the program's first championship.
Coastal Carolina effectively put this one to bed early with a six-run first inning in which five runs scored before the Cardinals recorded an out. Sophomore first baseman Colby Thorndyke delivered the biggest hit of the frame -- a three-run double into the right-center gap. Thorndyke collected three hits and five RBIs on the day.
Coastal Carolina starting pitcher Riley Eikhoff silenced Louisville's bats into the sixth inning. That's when the Cardinals began the makings of a comeback, plating three runs on RBI hits from Tague Davis, Garret Pike and Kamau Neighbors.
But Coastal Carolina struck for two runs in the bottom of the sixth, quickly halting any possible momentum for Louisville. Thorndyke was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to put the Chanticleers into double digits. They have scored 64 runs over eight games in the NCAA Tournament.
Coastal Carolina will take on either LSU or Arkansas in the best-of-three College World Series finals, which begin Saturday at 7 p.m. ET in Omaha.