Vanderbilt baseball has seen that Brodie Johnston home run before. That Riley Nelson home run, too. And that JD Thompson pitching performance.

Thompson started the NCAA tournament Nashville Regional game May 30 against Wright State in an immediate hole after walking the leadoff batter and giving up an RBI double. He gave up solo home runs in the second and fourth innings.

But the Commodores’ ace battled, making it through eight innings on 104 pitches, with five hits, one walk and 12 strikeouts. It’s reminiscent of an outing against Georgia in April, when he gave up a leadoff home run before getting through eight innings without allowing anything else.

As Thompson kept the Commodores in the game, their offense struggled to get going. They didn’t get a base runner until the fourth inning and didn’t record a hit at all off Wright State starter Cam Allen. But once Allen left the game after six innings, Vanderbilt came back for a 4-3 win to advance to the winners bracket.

The Commodores (43-16) will face Louisville May 31 (8 p.m. CT, ESPN+). The Cardinals had defeated East Tennessee State 8-3 earlier in the day.

“We’ve been there before,” Thompson said. “We’ve battled out some tough situations in the past. So we have those experiences and the level of trust we have right now, and for me, just to keep the game where it was, and not add on to it, I believe that kept them in the game and kind of allowed them to loosen up and just put a few at-bats together and then one swing.”

Johnston started the scoring by hitting his team-leading 14th home run of the season in the seventh inning. He has had several clutch hits this season, too. In a series opener against Georgia, he erased a 1-0 deficit in the seventh inning with a solo shot. He hit a game-tying, two-run double against Alabama and a two-run homer in the SEC tournament championship game against Ole Miss.

Nelson, who is the Commodores’ leading hitter at .357, hit a go-ahead grand slam against UC Irvine during the season’s first weekend.

Vanderbilt as a whole has been winning games this way the entire year. No game is ever over for the team that has had five walk-offs this season, erased a five-run deficit in the eighth inning of a game against Alabama and won the first two games of a series against Kentucky on a walk-off home run.

Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin believed the team played tight at the beginning of the game, and may have had some jitters or felt the pressure of being named the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. Eventually, things loosened up, just as they have all season.

“You can’t go in there and just say, all right, loosen up guys,” Corbin said. “Something has to happen on the field. Someone has to make something happen. It’s usually a play, it’s usually a pitch, it’s usually a hit that gets people going. It’s a momentum changer, and we see it all the time in regular games, but when the situation outcomes are heightened a little bit, you feel it more in this situation.

“But I didn’t doubt it . . . I didn’t know how, but I felt like we were going to catch them at the end. It would happen. And I feel like the kids did, too. I know they did.”

Despite the close game, the Commodores are still in good shape for the rest of the regional. Thanks to Thompson’s eight innings, they used only one other pitcher, Sawyer Hawks, who threw just 15 pitches to strike out the side in the ninth and secure the save.

The Commodores still have to win at least two more games to secure their first regional title since 2021, but their never-say-die attitude means that as the postseason goes on, they can never be counted out.

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.