If there is anything ASU's side of the College World Series bracket illustrates, it's that nothing in college baseball is a given.
The Sun Devils (No. 1) are the only national seed to advance to a double-elimination bracket that includes Clemson, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
ASU (52-8) opens up CWS play on Sunday at 4 p.m. Arizona time against Clemson (43-23), a game that will be broadcast on ESPN2.
The Pac-10 champion Sun Devils will play their second game, against either Oklahoma (49-16) or South Carolina (48-15), on Tuesday.
The winner of the bracket will begin play in a best-of-three championship series on June 28 against the winner of the opposite bracket that includes No. 3-seed Florida, No. 6-seed UCLA, Florida State and TCU.
Here's a look at how the teams on ASU's side of the docket forged their way to Omaha:
Clemson
The Tigers started the postseason on the road, slated as the No. 2 seed in the Auburn Regional. In a battle of Tigers vs. Tigers, it was Clemson that was able to win two games over the top-seeded hosts to earn its way to the Super Regionals.
With Alabama upsetting No. 8 national seed Georgia Tech in the Atlanta Regional, Clemson hosted the Crimson Tide, who squeezed out a 5-4 victory in Game 1. Clemson responded with a resounding 19-5 victory in Game 2 to force a deciding contest. The Tigers led 8-1 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 3, but Alabama scored five runs and brought the winning run to the plate before Clemson finally closed it out and earned its first trip to Omaha since 2006.
Junior Kyle Parker has led the Tigers at the plate this season, hitting .353 with 20 home runs and 64 RBI.
Junior pitcher Casey Harman is 7-3 with a 3.73 ERA in a team-high 108 2/3 innings.
Oklahoma
The Sooners used four home runs to rout heavily favored Virginia, 11-0, in the deciding game of the Charlottesville Super Regional. The win punched Oklahoma's first ticket to the CWS since 1995.
After sweeping through the NCAA Regionals, Oklahoma fell 3-2 to Virginia in the Super Regional opener before scoring 21 runs in the final two games to pave a path to Omaha.
The Sooners are getting hot when it counts, winning 14 of their last 16 games. Oklahoma was second in the Big 12 Conference this season with a .312 average.
South Carolina
The Gamecocks got into the act of upsetting the tournament's national seeds, by sweeping No. 4 Coastal Carolina, 4-3 and 10-9, in the Super Regionals. South Carolina trailed 9-7 with two outs in the eighth inning of Game 2 until freshman Christian Walker hit a three-run home-run on a 1-2 pitch that lifted his team to victory and its first trip to the CWS since 2004.
Sophomore Jackie Bradley Jr. leads the team with a .371 average with 11 home runs and a 51 RBI.
Gamecock pitcher Blake Cooper, a 12th-round pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks in last week's MLB draft, has had a stellar senior season, recording a 12-1 mark with a 2.81 ERA. Cooper will get the nod in his team's CWS opener against Oklahoma.
