College baseball: Cal State Fullerton beats Stanford to improve to 2-0 in regional play

Right-hander John Gavin gave up only three hits and struck out 10 in seven innings, second baseman Sahid Valenzuela had three hits, drove in a run and scored the go-ahead run in the fifth inning, and Cal State Fullerton defeated top-seeded Stanford 4-1 on Friday night to improve to 2-0 in the Stanford Regional.

The Titans on Saturday night will face the winner of an afternoon elimination game between Stanford and Brigham Young. If the Titans win, they will advance to a super regional. If they lose, they would play the same team again on Sunday to decide the regional championship.

Valenzuela tripled and scored on Dillon Persinger’s single in the fifth to give Fullerton a 2-1 lead.

Davidson 8, North Carolina 4: The Wildcats, in the NCAA tournament for the first time in the program’s 115-year history, made it a memorable debut in the Chapel Hill Regional by stunning the No. 2-seeded Tar Heels on their home field.

North Carolina became the highest national seed to lose its regional opener since No. 2 Florida lost to College of Charleston in 2014. The Gators were eliminated the next day.

Charleston, however, was in the tournament for the sixth time in 2014. Davidson had never won a baseball title of any kind before beating Virginia Commonwealth in the Atlantic 10 final on Sunday, and the Wildcats’ all-time record is more than 600 games under .500.

Davidson rocked ACC pitcher of the year J.B. Bukauskas, led 8-0 after five innings and moved to a winners’ bracket game Saturday against Florida Gulf Coast, another team in the national tournament for the first time. FGSU beat Michigan, putting the Wolverines into an elimination game against North Carolina.

Tennessee State 3, Florida State 1: Ryan Flick’s two-run double in the ninth inning pushed the fourth-seeded Golden Eagles past the host Seminoles in the day’s other big upset, forcing the Tallahassee Regional’s No. 2 seed into an elimination game Saturday against Central Florida.

In other regional openers:

At Corvallis, Ore.

Yale 5, Nebraska 1

Oregon State 8, Holy Cross 2

At Chapel Hill, N.C.

Florida Gulf Coast 10, Michigan 6

At Winston-Salem, N.C.

West Virginia 9, Maryland 1

Wake Forest 11, UMBC 3

At Lexington, Ky.

Kentucky 6, Ohio 4

N.C. State 7, Indiana 6, 12 innings

At Louisville, Ky.

Oklahoma 7, Xavier 2

Louisville 11, Radford 6

At Clemson, S.C.

Vanderbilt 13, St. John’s 4

Clemson 5, UNC Greensboro 4

At Gainesville, Fla.

South Florida 9, Bethune-Cookman 1

Florida 10, Marist 6

At Tallahassee, Fla.

Auburn 7, Central Florida 4

At Hattiesburg, Miss.

Southern Miss. 8, UIC 7

South Alabama 6, Mississippi St. 3

At Baton Rouge, La.

LSU 15, Texas Southern 7

SE Louisiana 12, Rice 6

At Fayetteville, Ark.

Missouri St. 6, Oklahoma St. 5

Arkansas 3, Oral Roberts 0

At Houston

Texas A&M 8, Baylor 5

Iowa 6, Houston 3

At Lubbock, Texas

Texas Tech 5, Delaware 2

Sam Houston St. 5, Arizona 4