Silently, Oregon State baseball's season ended at hands of Kentucky with 3-2 loss

Bottom of the ninth, two outs, a man on and trailing by one. It's the scenario every kid from Halifax, Canada, to Sydney, Australia, dreams about.

Oregon State's pair of international born players, the Canadian Micah McDowell and Australian Travis Bazzana, both found themselves in the exact spot. Playing on the road at Kentucky and needing two runs to walk off the Wildcats and stay alive for another day.

Bazzana was the first to step into the box in the situation. On first stood all 5-foot-6 of Dawson Santana, the typical backup second baseman came into the game after nine-hole hitter Mason Guerra drew a walk. Bazzana did his job, certainly not in the way kids dream about when imagining the situation, but a productive one nonetheless. He scorched a single to right field and despite a questionable lack of an interference call on the base paths that ultimately had no impact on the outcome of the game, Bazzana passed the bat and put Santana 90 feet away from tying the game.

Now it's the Canadian's turn. McDowell comes up to the plate and swings at the first two pitches he sees. Digging in, he waits for the next. McDowell gets an 83 mph changeup right down the middle.

And the fifth-year senior stares at it.

There would be no storybook ending or outcome dreamed up like kids on the playground do. Strike three, out three, game over. Kentucky advances to the College World Series for the first time in its program's history behind the 3-2 win. The clock on Oregon State's season strikes midnight — both literally and figuratively — as the final out is recorded at 12:33 a.m., local time.

But it is so, so much more than that for the Beavers. It is the end of McDowell's — and the several other rostered seniors on the roster — collegiate baseball career. It is presumably the end of projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 MLB draft Bazzana's career in orange and black. On an SEC baseball field in Lexington, Kentucky, the Pac-12 as we know it dies to the thunderous applause of the Wildcat faithful.

To head coach Mitch Canham, none of that matters beyond the fact that he's simply going to miss the group of young men he leads. His message to the team as they packed up their bats and traded their cleats for sneakers one last time?

"That I love them," Canham told reporters about what his postgame message was. "I could see it in their eyes how much they care and how much it stings. But really just getting to bring them all in one more time together. As I called them up, I wanted to make sure they were real close. I yell at them enough about a million other things. I didn't want to yell when I was telling them how much I loved them. And that I'm just proud of them.

"I could look at each of those guys that are going to be moving on, I know they're going to be in a great spot. They're going to have a wonderful family and they're going to overcome adversity ... I wanted to break the huddle one more time. We say a handful of different things, and that was the appropriate time to bring them up and get a, 'family on three.'"

Canham wasn't concerned with the discourse surrounding the death of the Pac-12 in his postgame interview, stating he's more focused on his program.

But regardless, in an after-dark time slot that the conference had been so beloved for, Pac-12 baseball dies. Not with the fight of a conference that has 29 College World Series victories to its credit, but with a whimper.

Offensively, it was a whimper all weekend from Oregon State. The squad managed just three hits in 18 innings of baseball, struck out 25 times and went 0-14 with runners in scoring position on the weekend. The one- and two-hit performances were the lowest totals in the category the Beavers had had all season as Elijah Hainline, Brady Kasper and Bazzana were the only players to hit safely.

"Obviously we struggled to find a little bit of a rhythm," Outfielder Dallas Macias told reporters following the game. "It sucks because we all want it so bad, and I know each guy wants it really bad and is out there competing as hard as they can. But it's hard to pinpoint. I think we kind of got potentially a little swing happy and was playing into some of the off-speed instead of being a little more patient. But that's all I've got there. But it's just tough."

Oregon State baseball falls 10-0 to Kentucky following seventh-inning meltdown

Excluding a disaster of a seventh inning in game one, the Beavers' pitching staff performed well. In a do-or-die game, junior right-hander Jacob Kmatz made the start and rang up eight batters in six innings, allowing just four hits and three runs. Relievers Nelson Keljo and Bridger Holmes handled the other three frames, combining for three hitless innings and five strikeouts despite a wild pitch on Keljo bringing home a run, credited to Kmatz.

Ultimately, the general success of the pitching staff didn't matter and it was the team that batted .053 through two games to hit the bricks. The first loss in 18 times donning their throwback uniforms proved to be the one to end it all for Oregon State.

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