Gunderson’s walk off keeps Charlotte’s NCAA baseball season alive

Cody Gunderson’s NCAA career isn’t over just yet.

The Charlotte 49ers senior from St Malo extended his career with a two-run walk-off single in Charlotte’s final game of the season, powering his team to a 8-7 win over Mephis to clinch a spot at the American Conference Championships.

The win put the Niners in a tie for sixth place in the conference standings, bouncing back to make the tournament after a rough start to conference play. Head coach Robert Woodard said he had an unusual talk with his team after a 1-2 series against Florida Atlantic with just 12 games left in their season.

“I usually don’t go to standings or landscape and what it takes because I try to stay centered on our team and getting better and being the first version of ourselves – but with this group of guys and all the seniors, they deserved to know what it was going to take to accomplish this,” Woodard said on the Niners website.

“I told them on the bus that it’s going to take seven wins to go where we want to go and to give ourselves a chance to win a conference championship in the tournament and to put numbers on the outfield wall. Seven wins. I’ll be danged if they didn’t win eight. They did more than our coaching staff asked them to do. I’m forever grateful for their resiliency and toughness.”

Making the win more memorable was the fact it came on senior day at Charlotte, with the program honouring their graduating players, including Gunderson throughout the day. It was his 100th career NCAA game.

Memphis took a 7-5 lead in the third inning, setting up Gunderson’s heroics in the bottom of the ninth.

“The whole team stayed together, kept it together, we just fought and fought and fought,” Gunderson said in a post-game press conference posted to the Niners website.

“We’ve faced adversity a lot this season… We’ve been trending in the right direction.”

Gunderson was named to the all-conference second team as a first baseman, hitting 0.336 with nine home runs and 38 RBIs this season.

Memphis and Charlotte faced in a re-match during the play-in portion of the conference tournament May 20 after press time.