OMAHA, Neb. -- Late Tuesday night, OK, actually early Wednesday morning, the baseball coaching staffs of Vanderbilt and Michigan were having the exact same meeting in two different meeting rooms held in a pair of downtown hotels that are separated by only a thousand feet or so. There, the eyes were bleary, exhausted from the flickering of opponents' game film filling those meeting rooms during the dark of night.
When the sun rose, those coaches began close inspection of the eyes of their players, looking for any indication -- good or bad -- that their roster of kids were ready for the task at hand later that night: winning the decisive Game 3 of the 2019 College World Series (7 p.