Scott Wingo drew a leadoff walk and took second when catcher Steve Rodriguez, perhaps distracted when Evan Marzilli squared to bunt, let an inside 1-0 pitch get past him. Wing moved to third when Marzilli got a bunt down, and scored when Merrifield drilled a 2-0 pitch by Dan Klein past the pulled in outfield of the Bruins (51-17) and into right field.

It was the fifth championship in an extra-inning final, and first since Southern California topped Florida State – also 2-1- in 15 innings in 1970. It marked the third time in five years that a school was a first-time winner in Omaha.

UCLA had a chance to go ahead in the ninth loading the bases with two outs, but it could not convert as it stranded 10 runners. “To get so close and fall short hurts,” said UCLA starting pitcher Rob Rasmussen. “But I think as it all sinks in and we look back on it, we’re all going to be proud of what we did.”

South Carolina provided the perfect send-off for the stadium that has been home to college baseball’s biggest event since 1950. The CWS moves to a new stadium in downtown Omaha next year. Once they got to Omaha, the Gamecocks lost their first game and had to stave off elimination four times to reach the finals, even winning one game after being down to their last strike.

Matt Price (5-1) got the win, allowing one hit over 2 2/3 innings for the South Carolina, who also went to the CWS finals in 1975, ’77 and 2002, but came up short. “I could have gone another two innings if I had to,” Price said. “The adrenaline kicked in. To be the last team to win it here, that’s amazing.”

Price worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth, then allowed only one base runner the rest of the way. South Carolina had runners in scoring position in four of the first innings, including loading the bases in the second, but could push nothing across until the eighth.

Pinch-hitter Brady Thomas reached base on a sharply hit ball up the middle to start the inning, chasing reliever Erik Goeddel. Klein came on, and pinch-runner Robert Beary moved to second on Kyle Enders’ grounder. Klein tried to trick Beary with a fake pickoff to second, with second baseman Cody Regis acting as if he were giving chase to a bad throw into center field. Beary wasn’t fooled, but South Carolina fans didn’t appreciate the shenanigans and booed loudly.

They were cheering moments later when Haney hit a chopper to the right side. The ball glanced off Espy’s glove, and Regis tried to grab it with his bare hand. He couldn’t get it and Beary rounded third for home as the ball trickled into right field.

UCLA had to reset its infield for the bottom of the ninth. First baseman Dean Espy punched a dugout wall with his right-hand after committing the error that led to the tying run, and that left him icing his hand. Brown moved from third base to first. Second baseman Cody Regis went from second to third and Adrian Morales took over at second.

The moves never hurt the Bruins. Brown made three terrific plays at first, making a scoop on Gallego’s throw from short to get Adrian Morales leading off the 10th. He fielded Haney’s roller and flipped to the covering Klein just in time to get the runner, and later hauled in a throw in the dirt from Klein on a bunt.

Michael Roth, the situational reliever who pitched a three-hit complete game Friday in a 5-1 win over Clemson, got the ball again on three day’s rest. He went five innings and allowed a run on six hits, walked two and struck out three.

Like the Gamecocks, UCLA missed out on early scoring chances. Roth picked off a runner at second in the first inning, got a double-play ball in the second and a groundball and a strikeout to end the third after Beau Amaral doubled.

The Bruins broke through in the fifth when Brown hit a leadoff single, moved over on a sacrifice and scored on Gallego’s two-out single to left. Rob Rasmussen started for the Bruins and went six innings, allowing no runs and six hits and walking four.

Still, wooden bats have appeal. They allow the game to be played as it was intended, the argument goes, with the hit-and-run, base stealing and bunting all emphasized. Plus, college players would in theory be better prepared to move to professional baseball. Earlier this year, Division II commissioners began studying the possibility of going to wood, perhaps as soon as 2012. Ty Halpin, the NCAA associate director of playing rules administration, said Division II made the move in part to address length-of-game concerns. Aluminum-bat games generally take longer because there is more offense.

The length of games also is a concern in Division I. In 1973, the year before aluminum bats, the average College World Series game lasted 2 hours, 19 minutes. Last year, the average was a record 3:38, with four games stretching longer than 4 hours, and since 1996, the average CWS game has been under 3 hours just once.

Aluminum bats were seen as a cost-saving alternative to wood when they were introduced at the college level in 1974, and the extra offense they produced added excitement to the games. Advances in technology and design in the 1980s and ‘90s fueled an arms race of sorts where companies tried to make the liveliest bat.

The result: an integrity-of-the-game crisis that peaked in the 1998 College World Series, when there were a record 62 home runs in 14 games. Southern California’s 21-14 championship-game win over Arizona State, which featured seven home runs and 39 hits, was a turning point.

The NCAA began taking steps to tone down aluminum bats and make them perform more like wood, a process that continues 12 years later. In 2011, a new standard will be implemented to bring the performance of metal bats closer to that of wood.

Previous bat testing emphasized the speed with which a ball exited the bat, but there were discrepancies with different lengths of bats. Researchers for the NCAA believe the new formula will offer a more direct measure, using wood-bat performance as the baseline. Renewed calls for wood came up last year when it was discovered that some composite-barreled bats had been tampered with to circumvent NCAA bat standards. Composite barrels – which contain varying amounts of graphite, fiberglass and resilient plastic – were banned for 2010 but will be allowed in 2011 if they meet the new standards.

Wood, of course, remains legal at all levels of college baseball. Just don’t count on ever seeing it in Division I, where bat makers’ have long-standing relationships with the top programs. Manufacturers such as Louisville Slugger and Easton provide free bats and other gear to elite programs and pay coaches – sometimes six figures – for agreeing to use their products.

Paul Mainieri, coach of 2009 national champion LSU, has a clause in his contract that calls for him to receive $150,000 a year from the school’s athletic booster club and equipment deals. His contract does not break down how much of that money comes from Easton, the Tigers’ bat supplier.

Asked about the bat issue, Mainieri said only he prefers aluminum. “He is concerned about saying anything that might affect his relationship with his bat company,” LSU baseball spokesman Bill Franques wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Besides the coaches’ paychecks, many programs save thousands of dollars a year in equipment costs because bat manufacturers supply bats for free.

“I think there’s some traditionalist in all of us,” said South Carolina’s Ray Tanner, whose contract calls for him to receive $120,000 a year from Easton. “That being said, aluminum bats are in college baseball because of costs. I’m not sure that wooden bats would ever be possible again.”

Oklahoma’s Sunny Golloway, who prefers wood, said economics won’t allow Division I to go away from metal bats, which set the college game apart from pro ball. “If we all of a sudden are swinging a wooden bat, there’s a good chance we are not the showcase anymore,” he said. “I’m realistic enough to know you’re not going to ask coach A or coach X to not accept his 100 K check this year so they can try this wooden bat.”

Louisville Slugger spokesman Rick Redman said it would be a challenge, but not impossible, for bat companies to supply college teams with wood bats. A switch would have to be phased in, he said, because manufacturers would have to ramp up production over several timber harvest cycles.

An Easton publicist, Marcey Brightwell, said the company had no comment.

A year after taking similarly hyped right-hander Stephen Strasburg, the Nationals took Harper, who can play catcher but was announced as an outfielder at the draft site at MLB Network Studios by Commissioner Bud Selig. Nationals’ general manager Mike Rizzo envisions Harper as a No. 3-type power hitter with a strong arm in right field. “We’re going to take the rigor and the pressures of learning the position, the difficult position of catcher, away from him,” Rizzo said, “and really let him concentrate on the offensive part of the game and let his athleticism take over as an outfielder.”

Harper went to great lengths to merely be eligible for selection this year, rather than play his junior season of high school baseball. With nothing left to prove at the high school level – and possible sensing that waiting until his senior year of high school could cost him a lot of money if a slotting system is part of baseball’s new labor agreement – Harper left high school two years early by getting his GEO diploma and enrolling at the Junior College of Southern Nevada.

The move paid off. Harper hit .443 with 31 homers and 98 RBIs in his first college season in a wood bat league, after skipping his final two years of high school and getting his GED. His season ended prematurely when he was ejected from a game at the Junior College World Series. That was the end of his amateur career.

Harper showed solid defensive instincts behind the plate and called pitches much of the time, but his path in the majors will be in the outfield. “It’s what I’ve wanted since I was 7 years old,” said Harper.

“When he was 13 and already making professional scouts twitch, Harper practiced with a 20-pound rod of steel from his father’s construction site,” wrote Alan Schwarz for The New York Times. “Today, Harper whips his Marucci CU26 maple wand through the strike zone with hummingbird speed and hummer power. It’s just right.”

“I can get better out there, I think. Anywhere they need me, I’ll play. I just want to make it and we’ll see what happens when I get there.” He may have some growing up to do, but Harper and Strasburg give the Nationals two building blocks teams can only dream about. The 6-foot-3, 205-pound Harper surpassed former big league pitcher Alex Fernandez, who went fourth overall to the Chicago White Sox in 1990, as the highest-drafted JUCO player. Harper was Baseball America’s High School Player of the Year last year as a sophomore at Las Vegas High, after hitting .626/.723/1.339.

Harper is expected to seek a record contract through his adviser, Scott Boras, who negotiated a record-breaking four-year, $15.1 million deal for Strasburg. Last year’s top overall pick made his major league debut almost a year to the day after he was drafted. The Nationals have through August 16 to sign Harper, who has said he has plenty of options, including going back to Southern Nevada for another year if negotiations go awry. “He’s a player that wants to get out and play,” Rizzo said. When asked if Harper will be allowed to wear his globs of eye black as a professional, Rizzo said, “No.”

Harper was the subject of a Sports Illustrated cover story while still in high school, and has reportedly hit balls over 550 feet. A hitter has not garnered that much national attention since possible Florida State’s J.D. Drew, who went No. 2 overall to Philadelphia in 1997 but didn’t sign a contract.

“Certainly, I expected him to have success, but I never saw this coming,” said Southern Nevada head baseball coach Tim Chambers.

“My first road trip it was like, ‘Oh yeah, I gotta take my own bag on and off the bus. Welcome to real like,” said Brosius.

The Division III Wildcats went 30-10 in the regular season to claim the Northwest Conference. Brosius, in his third year at the helm, was named the league’s coach of the year. Linfield, ranked No. 14 by the American Baseball Coaches Association, played host to a six-team NCAA regional in May. Second-seeded, they opened against fifth-seeded Mississippi College, and the winner advanced to the double-elimination D-III championship in Appleton, Wisconsin.

The job at Linfield is just part time and pays “probably less than minimum wage,” Brosius joked. But this is more of a labor of love: Scott himself bought the field lights and the infield turf at the school’s Roy Hesler Field.

Brosius has a tiny office in the back of the third base dugout. The walls hold photos from his playing days, one of the Yankees visiting the White House, another of the ticker-tape parade through Manhattan after the 1998 World Series championship. Brosius was named MVP of that World Series. The Yankees went on to win the title again in 1999 and 2000.

Brosius was originally drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 20th round of the 1987 amateur draft. He made his big league debut in 1991. He was traded after the 1997 season to the Yankees. His best year in the majors came that first season in New York, when he hit .300 with 19 homers and 98 RBIs.

Brosius – called ‘Brosius the Ferocious’ by Yankees play-by-play announcer John Sterling – left the game after the 2001 season with no regrets. He had collected his three rings, a Gold Glove and an All-Star nod.

It was a family decision, not a baseball decision, he said. “I never wanted baseball to feel like work. I never wanted to resent it,’ he said. “I felt like if I kept playing it would almost do more harm than good. I so fortunate the things I got to experience, going to four straight World Series, winning three of them. I got to play in an All-Star game. “I knew I wasn’t going to the Hall of Fame. There was nothing to chase, so I was done chasing. The time was right.”

An Oregon native, Brosius returned to McMinnville, where he made his offseason home. He had friends there and his father had ever taken a job there. The town of some 33,000 resident is located about 35 miles southwest of Portland in the heart of Oregon’s wine country.

In many ways Linfield looks like a small East Coast college plunked down in the West, complete with red-brick colonial dormitories and a bell tower that chimes on the hour. Brosius lives just a short drive away. “Scott loves coaching and he has a passion for it,” athletic director Scott Carnahan said. “He’s great with the kids.”

After his retirement from professional baseball, Brosius served as an assistant at Linfield under then-coach Carnahan. He took over in 2008. In three seasons, Brosius is 96-35 as coach of the Wildcats.

This season’s team, largely the product of his recruiting, is led by senior shortstop Kelson Brown, the conference player of the year, and sophomore Ryan Larson, the league’s pitcher of the year.

Brosius said that while name recognition probably draws some interested players to Linfield, at the D-III level there are no scholarships. “I guess there’s probably some credibility in a student’s mind if they’re looking for a coach that has some experience and maybe knows what he’s talking about,” Brosius said.

“But I think as you move further along into the recruiting process, the decisions they make become a bit more above that. There’s certainly a comfort level with the coaching staff that’s important, but then because they are paying for this – because we can’t scholarship them – they have to feel real good about the school and what it has to offer.”

Once they get there, Brosius doesn’t regale his players with endless stories about his glory days with the Yankees. This, after all, is real life.

“All in all, we don’t talk a ton about that stuff. Everybody knows that I played and stuff like that,” said Scott. “My goal, and I think I can draw some from that experience, is to show what I’ve learned along the way.”

“I’m a little like Forrest Gump,” he jokes. “It seems I’ve always been perfectly placed at the right time.

Last year, Frady led the Georgia State baseball team to its best season in school history and an NCAA Regional bid in May. In August, he coached the German National team to a second place finish at the World Baseball Challenge.

In his first-ever head coaching job in 1990, he led Columbus State to the NCAA II World Series. He then went on to lead North Florida Community College to school-record wins four times in six years. He joined Central Florida as associate head coach in 1997 and helped the Knights to Top 25 rankings in each of his seven seasons there.

This past season, only Frady’s third as head coach at Georgia State, the Panthers posted the best season in school history with 39 wins – shattering the mark of 33 set the season before. The team went on to sweep the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament and played in an NCAA Regional – both firsts for the program.

With a three-year record of 98-77, he has already posted the second-most wins for a baseball coach in Georgia State history. He was rewarded for his efforts last July with a five-year contract.

Though Frady may attribute part of his success to good fortune, there’s no doubting his knack for turning struggling programs around. It was this ability that led Court Hall, an international scout for the Atlanta Braves, to recommend him for the head coaching job for the down-and-out German National team in 2003.

“The government had told them they had one season to turn it around or they would lose all funding for baseball for international competition,” Frady said. After a handful of meetings with the German brass, Frady said he sat down with his family to vote on whether or not he would take the job. The Fradys overwhelmingly voted yes – with his son Riley abstaining from the vote, “just because he didn’t want his dad to be away for summers at a time,” Frady said. So off he went to Germany to revamp the foundering program, and he instantly met a major obstacle. “I couldn’t get any players because no one wanted to be on the team that lost baseball,” he said.

Eventually, by completely overhauling the existing roster, Frady was able to assemble a team. “A lot of the guys who were on the old national team couldn’t play dead in a cowboy movie,” he said. “So I ran them off and got some younger guys.”

The next year, Frady led the German team to a fourth place finish at the European Championship – their highest finish ever – which earned the team a spot in the 2007 World Cup. In 2008, the German squad came just two games shy of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics.

“It was a great achievement,” Frady said. “Today they have a level of respect, and I enjoy that.”

Though coaching two programs on two continents requires careful planning, long hours of work and travel, and being away from home, the “proud Eliijay, Georgian” says he relishes the challenge and the opportunity.

“Being a Georgia State guy, bridging the international community is important and meaningful to me,” said Frady. “I am a baseball person, and to be in a position where I can share baseball experience in a way that represents our university really makes me feel like a baseball ambassador.”

“Our kids played well,” said Biggio. “I’m very proud of them. We peaked at the right time.” And peak they did, because the Eagles had played Houston Christian three times earlier this year and lost all three games. Two of them were one-run affairs (4-3 and 3-2), however. “Two of them could have gone either way,” Biggio pointed out. “Every game was an intense game. Both teams are very similar. We had contributions from everybody and it was a well-executed game.”

Biggio’s sons were among those making contributions to the big victory. Conor, a junior second baseman, was hit by a pitch, drew a walk and hit a single. Cavan, a freshman DH who also played first, third and the outfield, had a double and one walk.

For the year, Conor batted .351 with five triples. He also drove in 26 runs and stole 20 bases in 23 attempts. Cavan, who batted .377 with five home runs, “really solidified my lineup (with his versatility),” coach Biggio said. “The thing that really impressed me most was that he had 20 walks and only five strikeouts.”

Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane was an interested spectator at the championship game. He stopped by afterward to congratulate the team and invite them all to a future Astros game. The Eagles’ final record of 25-13 is impressive from the standpoint of their schedule, one of the toughest in the state, which included the likes of national powerhouses Bellaire, Kingwood and The Woodlands. “We had a hellacious schedule,” assistant coach/athletic director Mike Netzel said. “And it’s not going to change. It hardened us. By the time we got down to the states, it made a huge difference.”

“These kids are so challenged academically every day that they’re tired. It’s tough to balance (academics and athletics).” Senior pitcher/center fielder Patrick Hicks won three playoff games on the mound and earned team MVP honors. The 6-foot, 185-pounder also batted .421 with eight home runs and drove in 45 runs. He will sign with Division I Dallas Baptist this week. The future for him is bright, indeed.

“We lose some offense, but will pick up some arms,” Biggio said. “We have a great freshman class coming in next fall. After next year, we’re going to be really strong. Our expectations are always to win the state championship. Our ultimate goal is to put our kids in college.”