Fullerton Weathers the Storm : College baseball: Popoff pitches complete game in rain to beat Miami, 8-1, and earn berth in today’s final against Pepperdine.

OMAHA —  There were tornado warnings in the Omaha area Friday night, but there will be no Hurricane watch today.

Cal State Fullerton made sure of that, defeating Miami, 8-1, and eliminating the Hurricanes from the College World Series in front of 14,932 on a rain-slicked Rosenblatt Stadium field.

The Titans (46-16) will now attempt to prevent Pepperdine’s Title Wave from sweeping through the Midwest when they face Pepperdine in today’s 10 a.m. (PDT) national championship game--the first time in the 46-year history of the CWS that two teams from the same state have played for the title.

Pepperdine (47-11-1) has won all three of its series games, two by shutout, but Fullerton is on a roll of its own, beating top-ranked and top-seeded Miami (55-10) twice in three days to increase its career Division I victory total to 800 and gain a shot at its third national championship.

Pepperdine-Fullerton was a heated rivalry from 1975-84, when both played in the old Southern California Baseball Assn., and the teams even met in the 1979 College World Series, with the Titans winning, 8-5, en route to the national championship.

The Waves have several Orange County players in their starting lineup and have played the Titans in nonconference games every year since 1984, but the teams weren’t on each other’s schedules this season.

“We all have a lot of friends over there, and (Pepperdine first baseman Dan) Melendez and I were roommates (during Team U.S.A. tryouts) the last two summers,” said Fullerton third baseman Phil Nevin, who had two doubles and two runs batted in Friday.

“We’ve talked about how we didn’t play this year and said that after the season we should go to some sandlot and play to decide who the best Southern California team was. So why not make it for the national championship?”

Fullerton wouldn’t have made it this far if not for a remarkable performance by senior right-hander James Popoff, who braved what Miami Coach Ron Fraser called “monsoon-like” conditions to throw a complete-game seven-hitter and strike out eight.

The Titans scored once in the first inning, twice in the third and twice in the fifth inning, which was interrupted by a 23-minute rain delay.

When the grounds crew took the tarp off the field and play resumed, the weather got worse. A hard, steady rain fell from the sixth through ninth innings, but it didn’t seem to affect Popoff a bit.

He walked only one and worked ahead of most Hurricane batters and was given some insurance when Fullerton scored single runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.

“It wasn’t easy pitching in that stuff, but I tried to stay focused by acting as if the rain wasn’t there,” said Popoff, who improved to 13-3. “I just put it out of my mind and concentrated on (catcher) Jason Moler’s glove. Working ahead of hitters was the key. If you can get them in a defensive mode, you’re going to win most of the time.”

Fullerton spent much of the evening in an offensive mode. Leadoff batter Jeremy Carr, who entered the game with two hits in 15 series at-bats, went three for five with a run and an RBI. Moler, who was two for 12 going in, had two hits and an RBI, Tony Banks closed the Titan scoring with an RBI double in the eighth and Chris Powell scored two runs.

Miami ace Jeff Alkire, who shut down the Titans on three hits in Miami’s 4-3 victory Sunday, was knocked out in the third inning. Fullerton also played errorless defense and came up with several fine plays, which wasn’t easy considering the conditions.

Second baseman Steve Sisco made a leaping catch of Juan Llanes’ liner and fielded Gino DiMare’s grounder behind second base and threw him out in the fifth inning.

After a long run, Carr caught Charles Johnson’s foul ball just in front of the bleachers down the line in the eighth inning, and Chris Powell raced back to the wall in right-center to catch Llanes’ drive amid a heavy rain to end the game.

“I don’t believe Chris caught that last ball, because the rain was really coming down and you could hardly see,” Carr said. “It was brutal.”

That’s how Fraser would describe the decision to play in this mess.

“I couldn’t believe they continued the game,” said Fraser, who lost the last game of his 30-year career. “The College World Series is the ultimate in college baseball, a real showcase, then to have to subject your players to these kinds of conditions doesn’t seem fair. That’s not to say we would have won in other conditions, but it didn’t seem right.”