Vanderbilt is joining the college baseball elite

Southern California, Texas, LSU. Three of the most storied programs in college baseball history.

The Vanderbilt Commodores are well on their way to joining the college baseball elite.

Eight long days in Omaha, Nebraska ended in a dog pile in TD Ameritrade Park on Wednesday night. After an 8-2 loss to Michigan in game one the College World Series final, the Vandy Boys rallied back to win games two and three and secure their second College World Series title in program history.

Freshman ace Kumar Rocker and sophomore right-hander Mason Hickman delivered on the mound with the weight of Vanderbilt’s season on their shoulders.

In game two, Rocker was dealing, going for 6.1 innings and only allowing three hits and one earned run. He also totaled a program College World Series record with 11 strikeouts. Hickman allowed three hits to the first three batters in the final game of the series, but quickly settled in. He went for six innings, allowing only one more hit and one earned run to go along with 10 strikeouts.

The SEC has long since been a baseball powerhouse, and Vanderbilt has slowly risen to the top of it. The SEC has had at least one team in the CWS final in 11 of the last 12 years to go with 11 total titles (and five in the last 10 years).

Vanderbilt didn’t have any NCAA Tournament appearances between 1980 and 2004. Now it has made it every season since 2006.

While Vanderbilt itself only has four CWS appearances, they all have come in the last 10 years with a national championship in 2014 and national runner-up in 2015 to go along with this year’s title.

This season, the Commodores went 59-12 — which is an SEC record for wins — and 23-7 through a rigorous conference schedule to win the regular season crown and the SEC Tournament crown.

“I talk to people who played college baseball not so long ago, and they can’t believe that Vanderbilt baseball is what it is now,” junior outfielder JJ Bleday told ESPN. ”But for my generation, this is what Vanderbilt baseball is.”

For a school with only five national championship through all sports, this year’s Vandy Boys are likely the best team in school history. Rocker — who was named the CWS Most Outstanding Player — called Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin the Nick Saban of college baseball. They tied an SEC record with 13 players selected in this year’s MLB Draft.

Corbin arrived in Nashville in 2003 and has built this program from the ground up. Wednesday night, the Vandy Boys took the stage as the new national champion and continued on their way to becoming about of the upper echelon of college baseball.