North Carolina State's Terrell Tatum homered off Vanderbilt's Jack Leiter, providing the only run in the Wolfpack's 1-0 victory over the Commodores on Monday night at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb., in the College World Series.

Tatum hammered a fastball several rows deep into the right-field bleachers, making a winner of freshman right-hander Sam Highfill, who stymied the Commodores for 7 1/3 shutout innings. Evan Justice finished for his 13th save.

Vanderbilt (46-16) got just two hits--both singles--one coming from first baseman Dominic Keegan in the first and another from left fielder Javier Vaz in the fifth. Both game with two outs.

Shortstop Carter Young drew leadoff walks on the fourth and ninth, and catcher C.J. Rodriguez took one to start the eighth. Cooper Davis pinch-ran for Rodriguez, and he got to third on a Vaz bunt and Jayson Gonzalez ground-out, and thus was the only Vandy runner to get past first.

And that was mostly because Highfill was flat-out brilliant, changing speeds, locations and even arm angles all night, firing 63 of his 100 pitches for strikes.

"You’ve just got to give him credit… Fastball, two different breaking balls, he dropped down…. He did a great job," Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said. "That was a really well-pitched college baseball game, as good as you want to see…. If you’re an offensive person you want to hit yourself over the head with a shovel."

The Commodores will face Stanford in an elimination game at 6 Wednesday. NC State stays in the winner's bracket and will play whichever team wins that one on Friday.

Leiter's performance was otherwise one for the ages. He struck out 15, allowed four hits (the other three were singles), walked one, hit nobody and threw 123 pitches.

Leiter's fastball sat anywhere from 92-96 all night--it was on the low end early, which Leiter said wasn't intentional--but his curve ball was tremendous most of the night. When he had issues landing that late, the fastball--which he got strikeouts with at 96 for the last two outs of the seventh--was his money pitch.

"That’s a max competitor right there," Corbin said. "He did everything he possibly could to put the team on his shoulders. He got most of the outs himself. It’s a team game but he was on an island tonight. ... It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen in the time I’ve been in Omaha. .. One pitch. One pitch. It sucks, but it’s what it is."

Leiter had a perfect game through four innings, and started the left-handed-hitting Tatum with a 76-mile-an-hour breaking ball on the first pitch of the fifth, just the second time he'd fallen behind a hitter to that point.

But the next one--his 60th of the game--decided the game.

"I knew [Tatum] was a good fastball hitter… C.J. set up away, the ball was middle in… and he kind of made me pay for it," Leiter said.

Corbin declined to name a starter for Wednesday--"There's not an obvious choice right now," he replied when asked--but Vanderbilt started Patrick Reilly in that spot most of the year. Christian Little, who last threw in the Southeastern Conference tournament, might be another option.

"We've got more free baseball, that’s fine," Corbin said. "More people get pulled into the fray which is good. What [Leiter] did is he preserved a pitching staff.

Leadoff man Enrique Bradfield Jr. failed to get on base in four trips, and was shown limping in the dugout at one point in the night. Corbin said he's okay.

"He’s not hurt," Corbin said. "I’m not sure what it was but I didn’t think he was hurt."