OMAHA, Neb. — The Oregon State Beavers don’t need to think hard about how their third straight elimination game in this year’s College World Series might look.

They’ve seen it.

They’ve seen the top of the eighth inning in a tie game, looking on as Wes Rea, Mississippi State’s 6-foot-5-inch first baseman, crushed a decisive two-run double to right-center field. They’ve seen themselves put two runners on in the bottom of the frame, only to abandon them on base and miss key scoring opportunities that could have won the game.

So the Beavers know that to stay in this tournament, to have a shot at another come-from-behind bid for a national title, they must do more than simply contain Rea and hot Bulldog bats. They need clutch hits of their own.

“We know they’ve got real good guys coming out of the (bull)pen,” OSU shortstop Tyler Smith said after the Beavers’ tense 1-0 win over Indiana on Wednesday night to stay alive in the CWS. “So we’re going to have to put together better at-bats against those guys than we did tonight.”

The Beavers have had success at the plate in this tournament.

Michael Conforto, the Pac-12 player of the year, has gone 7-for-12 at the CWS, with four doubles. He went into Wednesday’s game hitting .750 in Omaha, then went 1-for-4 against Indiana and is currently hitting .583 for the series.

But don’t let Monday’s 11-run outburst against Louisville fool you. The Beavers have struggled to get runners home during tight situations here.

Not only did Oregon State leave 10 runners on base in its first tangle with Mississippi State, the Beavers hit just .154 with runners in scoring position. They hit much better with men on base against Louisville, but still they stranded another 10 runners.

Feeble hitting returned again this week against Indiana, largely thanks to Aaron Slegers’ strong pitching. The Beavers logged seven hits, but they stranded seven runners. They were 1-for-11 with men on base, and they were 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

Going into Wednesday’s game, the Beavers were leading all teams in the series with a .288 batting average. That average has dipped to .269.

Now, OSU faces a team that followed its 5-4 victory over the Beavers with a 5-4 win over Indiana.

“They’re loose right now, playing well,” Oregon State head coach Pat Casey said of Mississippi State. “I don’t know how many games they’ve won in a row but they’re certainly playing good baseball.”

The Bulldogs have won five in a row, to be exact.

Still, Mississippi State has equal reason for concern.

It will be tough for OSU to match Matt Boyd’s 11-strikeout performance that keyed the Beavers’ 1-0 victory over Indiana. But the Pac-12 champions have some good options.

Andrew Moore, the right-handed pitcher from Eugene and Pac-12 freshman of the year, is listed as one of today’s potential starters. Moore (14-1, 1.57 earned-run average) allowed four earned runs — tied for most in his college career — in Saturday’s shaky start against Mississippi State, though he did settle down after the early innings.

Jace Fry (0-1, 8.31 ERA), a sophomore lefty from Beaverton, is also listed as a potential starter for Oregon State. Mississippi State lists senior left-hander Luis Pollorena (6-3, 4.32) as its probable starter today.

The Bulldogs face a program with plenty of recent College World Series experience — including emerging from the losers’ bracket to win a championship, in 2006.

The Beavers also have an 8-1 record in CWS elimination games under Casey.

Oregon State (52-12) must defeat the Bulldogs twice to reach the tournament’s best-of-three final round, which gets underway Monday.

Mississippi State (50-18) has made it to the College World Series nine times but has never won a title. The Bulldogs’ latest tournament appearance was in 2007, when they were eliminated in two games.

The Beavers, meanwhile, returned to Corvallis that year with their second straight national championship.

And this Oregon State team has made a habit of crawling its way back from the brink of elimination. It happened in the Super Regionals against Kansas State and has happened twice already here in Omaha.

Senior outfielder Ryan Barnes chalks it up to a team that does not want to call it a season.

“We’ve got a lot of seniors, a lot of older guys, and we’re just not ready to hang it up yet, I guess,” he said.

Barnes and his teammates hope they will end today’s game with the feeling they had for a few fleeting seconds late in their first matchup with the Bulldogs.

That’s when Danny Hayes smacked a ball deep into right field — far enough to have just about everyone in TD Ameritrade Park convinced that it would be a game-winning three-run homer.

But instead the ball came down about two feet short of the fence, landing in the glove of right fielder Hunter Renfroe for the game’s final out.

Now the Beavers have a second chance.

“That was a really good game, in the first game,” said Smith, the Beavers’ senior shortstop. “It could have gone either way — obviously a couple more feet and we win that game with Danny’s ball in the ninth. But it’s going to be fun to get another shot at them.”