'It was surreal': Evansville natives at the center of incredible college baseball comeback

EVANSVILLE — One of the largest comebacks in college baseball history occurred on Monday and Evansville natives were at the center of it.

Indiana University Southeast was down to its final out in the bottom of the ninth trailing Indiana Tech 11-2 in the opening round of the NAIA tournament. Colin Long and Mason White, who attended Reitz and Central, respectively, had made the first two outs.

Then the seemingly impossible happened.

The Grenadiers rallied with clutch base hits to score 12 runs and win the game 14-11. Kody Putnam, another Central graduate, extended the game with a single and later tied it with an RBI double before scoring on the walk-off three-run homer.

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There was no magic formula to the miraculous rally extending IU Southeast's season. The players simply believed in each other.

"It was surreal. We're just blessed to be a part of it," Putnam said. "That's a special game that we're going to be able to tell our children about one day. We'll never forget that game."

"At any moment, anybody can do anything that they put their minds to," Long added. "I think that was the big key in that last inning was just trying to stay on task and (have) everybody do their job and not try and do anything too special. It ended up working out, and we got a huge win out of it."

Putnam and Long have been friends since they played together in little league. Their fathers have coached together and sit next to each other in the stands. Meanwhile, Putnam and White were teammates on Central's sectional championship team in 2017 — White scored the tying run from third on Monday when Putnam doubled.

"When you go ahead and execute and do your job, it gets a lot more simple," Putnam said. "Mason knew that I wasn't trying to do too much. I just had to get that tying run."

Putnam, Long and White are all hitting over .300 and White leads the team with 16 home runs and 69 RBIs. They sure were grateful to see another day after rallying from such a large deficit.

"It's cool to see guys that you grew up with and played against even in high school working toward the same goal," Long said. "It's cool to see all of us come together in one inning and pull something off like that. We're very bought in to what we're doing here and what our coaches want. It was just a blessing to be a part of something like that."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville natives at center of Indiana Southeast baseball comeback