By John Mark Woelfel

 South Carolina defeated UCLA 7-1 on Monday night in the first game of the College World Series championship finals at Rosenblatt Stadium.

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South Carolina starter Blake Cooper was dominant against the Bruin lineup, matching a CWS record with 10 strikeouts and not allowing a run until the ninth inning.  The Gamecock pitching staff has now held its last four opponents to three runs or less.

Cooper had to convince coach Ray Tanner that he was ready to go on just three days rest. 

“Coach Calvi came to my room last night, asked if I was good to go, and I said, Yeah, I'm going,” Cooper said.  “Coach Tanner called me to the room this morning and he said would I want another day off.  Like he said, I really didn't think another day was going to matter at this point.”

The South Carolina offense provided a big lift for Cooper as well.  All 10 Gamecocks that came to the plate had at least one hit.  Shortstop Bobby Haney led the way, going 2-for-3 with three RBI.  UCLA starter Gerrit Cole (11-4) gave up six runs, four of them earned, on 11 hits.  It was the most hits he had given up in 33 career starts. 

South Carolina jumped on Cole early scoring two in the first, one in the second, and two in the third to build a 5-0 lead.

“It obviously feels good to get a couple of runs in the beginning of the game,” Haney said.  “Obviously off a great pitcher, it boosted our confidence a lot. And we just went from there and Coop led the way.”

UCLA didn’t get their first hit of the game until the fifth inning.  Cooper then retired 11 men in a row before giving up a leadoff single in the ninth.  The Bruins scored their only run on a double play before a fly ball ended the game.

“We got a great start tonight offensively,” Tanner said.  “We pushed across some runs early.  And they made a couple of mistakes and we had a couple of hits stuck in there. We really didn't hit Cole that hard early, but we were able to get a couple balls to drop and scored some runs.”

The Gamecocks are one more victory away from collecting the school's second ever NCAA team title. UCLA, who has 106 titles, will have to win the next two meetings starting on Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. CT to keep that from happening.

Read more:  John Mark runs a blog that covers the Cubs and the Cardinals over atTheOutfieldIvy.com