Xavier advances to Big East baseball championship
Xavier advanced to the Big East baseball championship game with a 5-3 win against Seton Hall Saturday in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The fourth-seeded Musketeers scored four runs in the seventh inning and got 4 2/3 innings of one-hit, shutout relief work by junior pitcher Sean Campbell to come from behind and beat the No. 3 seed Pirates at MCU Park. Bo Slemons hit a sacrifice fly with the bases loaded to break a 3-3 tie and Mitch Elliott added an RBI single in the seventh inning.
The Musketeers (28-27) will face top-seeded Creighton (32-16-1) on Sunday afternoon with an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament on the line. Xavier has been to the NCAA tournament just once before in its history, going 1-2 in regional play in 2009.
Xavier lost 9-2 to Creighton in the first round of the tournament Thursday but came back to beat No. 2 seed St. John's 8-2 on Friday in an elimination game. Xavier lost two of three games to Creighton last weekend in the final series of the regular season.
Sunday's game begins at 1 p.m. and will be televised on Fox Sports 1.