Few sports require more skill than baseball. Trying to hit a ball coming toward you at 90 miles per hour would made make the average person look silly, and it takes a special kind of human being to throw a ball 90+ miles per hour up to 100 times in a night.

While all those things are true, winning and losing baseball games often comes down to the finest of margins and a few lucky or unlucky bounces.

Auburn baseball found itself on the wrong end of that on Friday, losing to Coastal Carolina 7-6 in Game 1 of the super regionals. How it happened was the heartbreaking part, with the Chanticleers turning a double play on a diving catch at second base in the ninth and tenth innings.

Both times, Auburn had a runner in scoring position with one out. In the ninth, that ball squirting through would have likely won Auburn the game. In the tenth, Auburn needed that ball to get past Blake Barthol’s glove to keep the game alive.

“L4 double play back-to-back innings, exactly how we drew it up,” Coastal Carolina coach Kevin Schnall said postgame, unable to hold back a smirk.

For Auburn, simply having a chance to win the game in the ninth took an impressive effort. The Tigers trailed 6-1 after the top of the fourth inning and found themselves down by three runs when an hour and 45-minute weather delay halted the game going into the bottom of the sixth inning.

The comeback started before the delay, but Auburn seemed to find another gear after the stoppage, eventually tying things at six on an Eric Snow home run in the seventh inning.

“I really was impressed with our guys,” Auburn coach Butch Thompson said. “That was the first time we had trailed here, it seems like, in the postseason, and kind of worked back.”

It seemed like all of the energy shifted back in Auburn’s favor during the late innings. The depleted, but still energetic, Plainsman Park was electric, Auburn kept getting runners on base and reliever Griffin Graves was untouchable out of the bullpen.

But Coastal Carolina, a team that is now on a 22-game winning streak, didn’t relent.

The diving double play in the ninth inning pushed the game into extra innings, where catcher Caden Bodine hit a deep home run to right field that turned out to be the winning run. It was one of two home runs on the night from Bodine, and it sucked all the remaining energy out of Plainsman Park after Auburn had worked so hard to get back into the game.

Now, the Tigers have to get off the mat with their season on the line. The task won’t be easy either, as Game 2 is scheduled to start just under 13 hours after Game 1 concluded at 1:17 a.m.

Unfortunately for Auburn, the grind of the postseason doesn’t care about how much sleep the players get between games. Either the Tigers turn the series around on Saturday afternoon, or a historic season ends on home soil.

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m