Fifth-year senior reliever Alex Hardy said he’s never been on a Washington team with a closer bond — a “family,” in his words.
NCAA tournament selections are by nature joyous affairs, yet Washington’s baseball team had some reckoning to do before they could fully embrace theirs.
The Huskies on Saturday had been three outs away from a sweep of third-ranked Stanford that would have given them, to the shock of the college baseball world, a share of the program’s first Pac-12 title since 1998.
That evaporated in a three-run ninth by the Cardinal that gave them a 6-5 victory, and gave the Huskies a temporary downer.