South Carolina is not supposed to win a national championship of any kind; when it wins its second in a row in a major college sport, that's something to pay attention to. To anyone who somehow doubted its success because of a series of postseason appearances that proved as futile as the Atlanta Braves' 1991-2005 run, South Carolina baseball proved in 2011 that it is a program to be paid attention to.

To some degree, it was simply another demonstration of the SEC's dominance in college baseball, a sport that the conference towers over far more than it even thinks about controlling college football. Of the 64 teams in the NCAA Division I baseball tournament, seven came from the SEC. (For reference, there were 292 teams in Division I baseball last year, meaning one in roughly every 4.5 teams nationally goes to the tournament, while more than half of the teams in the SEC did.)

Three of the national seeds that keep home-field advantage until the College World Series heads to Omaha came from the league: Florida, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

And then the series began. All seven SEC teams made the finals of their respective regionals. Florida, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Vanderbilt made the Super Regionals, with all except for Mississippi State moving onto the eight-team College World Series. The Gators and the Gamecocks eventually made the final series, ensuring an SEC win in the event for the third consecutive season.

The whole time, South Carolina kept a postseason winning streak that stretched back to 2010's CWS run going -- bizarre game after bizarre game. And when the dust cleared, South Carolina had taken home its second national championship in a major team sport.

That capped something of a golden age in Gamecocks athletics. Just a few months earlier, South Carolina had won the 2010 SEC East title in football. Two straight national championships in another sport put South Carolina fans in a position they have rarely know: Their programs looked like winners.

Beginning this year, another will get to continue one of the greatest win streaks in Gamecocks history. Even if they fall short, it will have been a great ride.

Is this what a dynasty looks like?

Forgive a South Carolina fan if he's not familiar with the concept, if it still hasn't sunk in what two national championships in a row means. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen for the Gamecocks, a program that played organized sports for more than a century before it brought home any kind of hardware in any major team sport.

Now, South Carolina baseball has completely slain that particular ghost. The Gamecocks now own not just one baseball championship, and not just two, but back-to-back championships as part of a College World Series 11 straight wins. The Gamecocks never lost a postseason game this year. SEC dominance was a storyline of this College World Series, sure, but South Carolina dominance was the theme.

The final game was in many ways unlike the victories that got the Gamecocks to the cusp of history. There were no elimination-defying stunts, no bases-loaded, no-out jams escaped from by the thinnest of margins to preserve a tie game. South Carolina took the lead early with a three-run third inning and never looked back.

Could South Carolina repeat again? Who knows? No one saw the first national championship coming, and almost no one figured that they would win the second in a row this year. Even an impartial observer would have to be hesitant to rule them out.

It's been a year of improbabilities for South Carolina fans, from the national championship last year to the SEC East win in football to a repeat run through the baseball postseason this year. Dynasties always live on borrowed time, and South Carolina's run will end eventually.

But those concerns are for tomorrow. Tonight, the Gamecocks are on the top of the world again. The feeling still might not be that familiar to South Carolina fans, but we could get used to it.

The only regret would be that Bayler Teal -- who started the whole run by inspiring last year's championship -- is not here to enjoy it. Something tells me that he's smiling in Heaven right now. A lot of Gamecock fans here on earth are smiling along with him.

Maybe we should all be used to this by now. There's nothing ordinary about this South Carolina team or how it's strung together more than a year of NCAA tournament wins. Call it luck, or clutch, or even something slightly magical -- whatever it is, it's made this South Carolina team hard to meet.

In a way, it started before the game, with the saga of Christian Walker's fractured hamate bone. Might it force him to sit out and require the Gamecocks to turn to star pitcher Michael Roth for emergency duty? Printed line-up cards reportedly listed that exact situation -- until Walker was announced shortly before gametime as the team's starter at first base.

But the Gators would take the lead first, with a leadoff walk to Tyler Thompson in the third inning. A groundout and a wild pitch quickly turned that walk into Thompson running at third with one out. Cody Dent drove in Thompson with a sacrifice fly.

The 1-0 lead held until the eighth inning, with Hudson Randall mowing down South Carolina batter after South Carolina batter. Then the Gamecocks' special ability to win kicked in. Hudson walked Peter Mooney to start the eighth. Mooney eventually wound up on third with two outs. That's when Scott Wingo came to the plate, and anyone familiar with South Carolina baseball kind of knew what would happen next -- Wingo singled and Mooney scored. 1-1.

But Florida looked like it would finally get the better of the Gamecocks in the ninth. Mike Zunino walked to begin the inning. Brian Johnson singled to advance Zunino to third. The Gamecocks intentionally walked Josh Adams to load the bases and set up the force out at home. But it also loaded the bases with no outs.

Then, Tyler Thompson sharply cracked a ball up the middle -- which Wingo snared on the dive and threw home, getting the out only when Robert Beary picked the ball nicely. Daniel Pigott then got up and hit another ball to Wingo, who shot it back to Beary, who threw to Walker at first to get the out. (Replay showed that Pigott probably should have been safe, requiring at least one more episode of heroism from the Gamecocks -- and maybe one too many.)

The game would get too close for South Carolina's comfort once more. In the tenth, Zunino singled with Dent on second. Dent rounded third as Jake Williams picked up the ball and fired it to Beary, who caught it up the line and then lunged at Dent -- tagging him before he reached the plate to end the inning.

The 11th, though, was where things got even odder. Walker singled with one out. In a game he was not even supposed to be playing in, Walker then tried to steal second. Zunino air-mailed the throw to center field, allowing Walker to move to third. Bryson Smith picked up the ball and could have tossed it into the infield. Instead, Smith threw it wide to third, and Walker trotted in with the go-ahead run.

But Florida still had to bat in the 11th. And South Carolina head coach Ray Tanner decided to call Matt Price, a closer who on Friday had thrown 95 pitches in a 13-inning win against Virginia to get to the finals. Price gave up a leadoff single and then shut down the Gators offense for the save.

The series is, of course, far from over. A 1-0 lead can be commanding in a three-game series, but it's also fleeting. A win from Florida will even things up, setting up a winner-take-all game on Wednesday.

You have to think the Gamecocks would take that. They've gotten this far with their backs to the wall; why stop now?

The game starts at 8 p.m. ET; and at least one of your hosts will be around for it. Hold forth below. We're also on Twitter -- @TeamSpeedKills for cocknfire and @Year2 for Year2.

College World Series final thread opens at 7 p.m. ET. Join us, why don't you?

They meet again.

Doesn't it almost seem like this was supposed to be the endgame between Florida and South Carolina? One arguably won the regular-season SEC championship -- if you count tiebreakers -- while the other was one of the teams in the mix for the championship and won the conference tournament.

After all, the trips through the College World Series sometimes matched the season itself. There was Florida, ranked No. 1 coming into the season by Baseball America. And there was South Carolina, whose lofty No. 7 ranking nonetheless pegged them as no better than the third team in the stacked SEC East.

Florida came to Omaha as a favorite, if not the favorite, to emerge from its side of the bracket. And South Carolina emerged as a likely runner-up to Virginia, the No 1 national seed and the No. 1 team in the nation -- and swept through its half of the College World Series field as easily as it seemed to slice through the regular season. There were some notably difficult moments, such as the rough start to the Texas A&M game and the harrowing, 13-inning epic against Virginia to clinch the ticket to the finals. But in the end, South Carolina did what it has done ever since dropping its first game in Omaha last year: Win postseason baseball games.

Not that the postseason winning streak was supposed to get this far. Teams don't climb out of the losers' bracket to win the whole thing -- but the Gamecocks did in 2010. And UCLA was supposed to easily blow by the Gamecocks and claim the 2010 crown -- but South Carolina was the team hoisting the trophy when the College World Series was over. Once again, South Carolina is being counted out by many of the experts. You'll excuse fans if they don't take those predictions too seriously.

Florida, on the other hand, is looking for the last leg of a powerful trifecta -- becoming one of an elite few schools to claim a national championship in football, basketball and baseball. (Some quick Internet research turns up Cal, Michigan and Ohio State as the others.) National championships are not a right, but they are likely beginning to feel like it at Florida -- and rightly so.

Whatever happens, the numbers say it will be a low-scoring series. If you go by the numbers -- and what else can you go by? -- South Carolina has the edge on pitching. That will cause some dispute among the experts, but I'll take numbers over experts any day. By the same token, you have to give the offensive advantage to Florida, especially with the questions around Christian Walker, easily the Gamecocks' best hitter. That will cause almost no dispute, even among most of the South Carolina fans.

One way or another, though, we will have a definitive SEC champion by the time the curtain goes down in Omaha. That team will also be the national champion. And it seems like we've been headed that way all along.

It took a long time to get there, but the SEC will win the College World Series for the third year in a row. The team that takes home the trophy is still to be determined.

The day started with Florida using a late offensive surge -- two runs in the bottom of the eight -- to eliminate Vanderbilt and clinch one of the two spots in the CWS final series. The only question was whether the final would be an all-SEC match-up, something that would be decided by South Carolina's game against Virginia.

That game was nothing short of epic. It started with Virginia's Danny Hultzen striking out eight of the 10 batters he faced as the Cavaliers took a 1-0 lead -- but the flu was an opponent that he couldn't pitch his way past. Once Hultzen came out after the third inning, South Carolina put together three hits and a hit batter to take a 2-1 lead, which held until the eighth.

In that inning, two errors helped Virginia push across the tying run. And suddenly the marathon had begun.

Inning for inning, the two teams' closers matched each other pitch for pitch. Branden Kline was brilliant for Virginia, throwing 107 pitches over five scoreless innings. Not to be outdone, South Carolina's Matt Price hurled 95 pitches in 5.2 innings. He also didn't allow a run. Again, these were the closers.

Virginia blinked first. Kline was removed before the bottom of the 13th, and Cody Winiarski was brought into pitch. It was not his night. With a runner on first, Peter Mooney bunted the ball to Winiarski, who threw to second well ahead of Adam Matthews -- only Winarski missed the second baseman, and Matthews was safe. Robert Beary then bunted the ball to Winiarski, who threw to third base. In this case, the throw was not well ahead of Matthews. Which was bad enough, but Winiarski's throw was once again not on target, and it got by the third baseman, allowing Matthews to score the winning run.

South Carolina and Florida will now square off in three games for the sport's biggest prize. South Carolina won two out of three when these teams matched up in the regular season. They were two of three teams tied for the SEC and SEC East regular-season championship. Florida won the SEC tournament. Both teams largely bulldozed through the postseason.

Now, they meet one more time in 2011. And this showdown counts more than any other.

An all-SEC final series in Omaha is becoming more and more like, with reigning national champion South Carolina and reigning SEC tournament champion (and co-regular season champion) Florida each just one game away from advancing to the three-game title set.

Florida started off the day, wrapping up a 3-1 win that had started Monday and been suspended, only to have the teams come back and play to the same conclusion. The Gators will now wait for the winner of a Vanderbilt-UNC elimination game scheduled for Wednesday at 7 p.m. on ESPN2. (The weather has obviously been uncooperate in Omaha this week, so that's always subject to change.)

South Carolina, meanwhile, jumped out to a 3-0 first-inning lead against Virginia -- the favorite on the Gamecocks' side of the bracket -- and never really looked back in an easy 7-1 win. Even without the offensive explosion, South Carolina would have had a chance to win the same way it's won a lot of its games this year -- with great pitching and solid defense. Of course, the three Virginia errors certainly didn't hurt the Gamecocks when it came to scoring the winning runs.

The Gamecocks will eventually face the winner of an elimination game between Virginia and Cal set for 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2. The Golden Bears have become something of a darling for ESPN -- not without reason; this is a team that was about to close its baseball program -- and Virginia is still a tough team.

Florida, South Carolina and Vanderbilt all still face a tough road to get to the finals. There are no easy routes to victory in Omaha. But a win on Wednesday by Vanderbilt would guarantee at least one SEC representative in the championship series, and a win after that by South Carolina would ensure the baseball trophy remains in the league, with only the question of where it would reside to be decided.

It has been almost a year since South Carolina lost a game in the NCAA tournament, so it didn't necessarily feel like things were lost when they went down 4-0 in the first inning against Texas A&M in the Gamecocks' first game of the College World Series. And that was even before things got really odd.

After all, the Aggies' four runs were all unearned. And so were two of the runs that South Carolina plated in the Gamecocks' four-run first inning -- a frame that included a balked-in run and an errant throw from second base to first that almost could have made the upper deck at Generic Corporately Named CWS Stadium.

And just like that, the scoring stopped. For the next seven-and-a-half innings, the pitchers for both teams flustered, confused and set down most of the batters that went to the plate. South Carolina's Michael Roth pitched a mind-boggling 122 pitches in 7.1 beautiful innings of work. Because all the runs in the first inning were unearned, his ERA almost disappeared, dropping to 0.97. Ross Stripling for Texas A&M countered with his own great performance once the rocky first inning was over.

Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Robert Beary doubled and nearly made the fatal decision to try to turn it into a triple. Luckily for South Carolina and its fans' coronaries, he stopped awkwardly, then advanced to third on a hit by Jackie Bradley Jr. (After the reigning Most Outstanding Player had been asked to bunt until he had two strikes, which is a story for another day.) Evan Marzilli walked before Scott Wingo -- the closest thing South Carolina and perhaps college baseball has to a last-decade David Ortiz -- rocketed a ball to right field for his latest walk-off hit.

So far, the SEC is 3-0 in Omaha -- or, as Alligator Army correctly pointed out on Twitter Sunday night, the SEC East is 3-0 in Omaha. That will end Monday night, when Florida and Vanderbilt square off in the winners' bracket. But even then, it's one last sign of how far ahead of the SEC West the East was this year. The reigning national champions still haven't lost a game this year in the tournament; neither has Vanderbilt. Oh, and SEC tournament champion Florida is also just four wins away from its first national title in baseball.

All in all, not a bad showing by the conference in the opening round.

Even if it did take a little bit of luck to get there.