When the mosh pit settled, ESPN’s Kris Budden asked Tommy White the question we were all thinking at the end of Thursday’s 11-inning, instant classic College World Series semifinal matchup between LSU and Wake Forest.

“For all of us who just witnessed this, what did we just see?”

And fittingly, White, AKA LSU hero Tommy Tanks, offered up this answer.

“Awesome. I don’t know. I’m at a loss for words … I’m excited.”

Yep. All of us were at a loss for words after White delivered a walk-off blast to break a scoreless tie and send LSU to the CWS finals for a 2017 rematch against Florida.

Not even those childhood backyard daydreams are quite as big as this:

Next to Warren Morris’ walk-off to win it all in 1996, that’s as big of a moment as there’s been in LSU baseball history. Never mind the fact that White was admittedly fooled by the first pitch slider, and he was actually sitting on a fastball “but I was so amped up I just threw my hands at it.”

Yeah, on a night in which we got to the bottom of the 11th scoreless, the lone runs scored came on a fooled hitter. Fitting.

Any ending would’ve been epic after the pitchers duel we got between Paul Skenes and Rhett Lowder, both of whom were brilliant with 8 innings of shutout ball. Even on pitch No. 103, Skenes hit 99 MPH on a 2-seam fastball for strike 3 on the inside corner. He surrendered just 2 hits and 1 walk all night.

Both Skenes and Lowder matched each other at every turn. If that all but guaranteed their status as future top draft picks, nobody would be surprised. Maybe one day they’ll be MLB aces and we’ll look back at the time they delivered an all-time pitching showdown with a CWS finals berth at stake.

In the end, though, it’s Skenes’ squad who’ll look back on Thursday’s thriller with fonder memories.

LSU turned the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament into a shell of itself. Two total runs in 2 elimination games was all the Demon Deacons came away with. After the 5th inning, Wake Forest’s next hit didn’t come until the 11th, and it was essentially a swinging bunt. That was the only hit Thatcher Hurd allowed in 3 innings of relief work for Skenes.

Up until the Tommy Tanks blast, any pitcher who took the mound made it look easy. Hard contact was hard to come by. The defense was spectacular, too.

Speaking of that, can we talk about how insane Tre Morgan’s play was on the safety squeeze to preserve the scoreless game?

That athleticism, man. From a first baseman, no less. The history books will always remember the swing that sent LSU to the CWS finals, but we can’t ever forget that play by Morgan. Anything less than that and Wake Forest plates the go-ahead run and wins in 9.

Instead, though, LSU made sure a different script played out.

For Wake Forest, it was a frustrating, unfamiliar script. It lost consecutive games for the first time all season. The team some expected to become the first No. 1 overall seed to win the CWS since 1999 Miami (FL) was yet another casualty.

LSU did it the hard way after falling to Wake Forest on Monday. Three consecutive elimination game victories forced the Tigers to figure things out with their backs against the wall. LSU only averaged 4 runs in those contests and it never plated more than 5. Not too shabby for a team who was previously 4-9 in games in which it scored 5 runs or less.

Shoot, LSU was 0-2 in games that it scored 2 runs or less. That is, until Tommy Tanks walked it off.

LSU was never going to reach this point without figuring out new ways to win. That’ll need to continue against Florida, who surely didn’t mind watching Skenes empty the tank — pun absolutely intended — to keep LSU’s season alive. The Gators are the ones with their pitching lined up having only played 3 games in Omaha. Granted, all of those were 1-run victories. Nobody has really been a juggernaut in Omaha yet.

Perhaps that’s coming. Even if Florida is the team who emerges as the unstoppable force, it shouldn’t change what we saw on Thursday night. It was great for LSU, and it was great for college baseball as a whole. It was an efficient, but dazzling pitching performance that was destined to yield some late-game heroics in a do-or-die semifinal game. Outside of that happening in the deciding CWS finals game, that’s about as good as it gets.

White will get plenty of time to catch his breath and tell the story of Thursday night. That’ll be a moment he’ll want to relive for the rest of his life. Who knows if he’ll tell his grandkids the part about getting fooled and swinging at the first pitch. Surely he’ll tell them how he left NC State for LSU in hopes of being part of moments like that.

However White chooses to retell the story, any non-Wake Forest fan who watched Thursday night’s game for the ages would probably sum it up just as he did.

“Awesome.”