The college baseball season is underrated, and the tournament that follows it is the most under appreciated in all North American sports. As I discussed in my tournament preview last week, the College World Series and the rounds that precede it provide some of the most entertaining sports moments of the year.
This year’s tournament has been no different. Upsets have been common occurrences all around the bracket, with top team after top team falling. Let’s look at the numbers:
Seven out of the 16 regional hosts failed to advance.
Of the 13 SEC teams that entered the field, only four won their regional (Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, and Tennessee).
The ACC, which produced nine tournament teams, has five schools going to the next round (North Carolina, Florida State, Duke, Louisville, and Miami).
Two Big 12 schools, West Virginia and Arizona, advanced. TCU, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Cincinnati, and Arizona State couldn’t make their conference proud.
Five four-seeds (Wright State, Columbia, Saint Mary’s, Utah Valley, and Little Rock) won games against the top teams in their regional.
Those are just some of the figures that illustrate how dramatic this past weekend of baseball was. If you don’t believe me, take the internet’s word for it. All across the World Wide Web, people were discussing how this was one of, if not the best, regional rounds we’ve seen in a long time.
So, let’s break it all down in Part 2 of my Regionals Recap.
Austin Regional
If the results of the Nashville Regional were surprising, then what happened in Austin last weekend was flat-out flabbergasting.
For pretty much the entire back half of the regular season, Texas found itself at the top of the polls. It was only toward the end of the campaign that the Longhorns slipped to number two once Vanderbilt picked it up a notch. At the end of the day, both schools failed to make it out of their own regional.
In Nashville, it was Louisville, an ACC program that’s historically been a successful baseball school, that beat the host. In Austin, on the other hand, it was UTSA that upset the apple cart, a mid-major program that’s defying the odds with each and every victory in the postseason.
Don’t get it twisted: UTSA’s success in Austin was not a fluke. Beating Texas twice in two days was something that the collective college baseball world didn’t see coming, yes, but it was also a feat that makes a lot of sense once you look back at the body of work for the Roadrunners in 2025.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, take Longhorns’ head coach Jim Schlossnagle’s, who called UTSA “an Omaha-caliber team.” Now, could you possibly take that with a grain of salt since he said it after the Roadrunners had beaten him twice and he might’ve been trying to save face? Possibly. But the work done by UTSA speaks for itself.
Los Angeles Regional
Of all the regional hosts that I believed would falter, UCLA might’ve been at the top of the list. The other teams in the regional — UC Irvine, Arizona State, and Fresno State — all had reasons why they could be the school to dethrone UCLA in Los Angeles.
Alas, it was not to be.
There was never a moment this past weekend when UCLA looked uncomfortable. The Bruins scored runs upon runs, starting with a 19-4 trouncing of Mountain West champion Fresno State. A bout with Arizona State, one of the new darlings of the Big 12, was just as easy. It was then on to the regional final, where UC Irvine, another California powerhouse, awaited. That game, while close at times, was never in doubt, as UCLA won 8-5 to conquer the regional.
Athens Regional
It was an active war zone in Georgia over the weekend, as bombs were flying everywhere. Oh, look, a home run! Wait, there’s another one! Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe what just happened in Athens. A home run!
Every time I looked at the television, a ball was leaving the yard at Foley Field. A whopping 37 home runs were hit among Georgia, Duke, Oklahoma State, and Binghamton during the Athens Regional last weekend. Wow.
The two most impactful long balls occurred during the penultimate game of the regional between Georgia and Oklahoma State. It was an elimination contest, with the winner moving on to the regional final to face Duke and the loser packing their bags and heading home. Neither side wanted to fit into the latter category, and they fought tooth and nail to avoid it.
Down 9-7 heading into the bottom of the ninth, it appeared that Oklahoma State’s hopes of staying alive were gone. Not so! After Nolan Schubart walked to start the frame, Kollin Ritchie hit a moon shot to right field to tie the game. That prompted a Georgia pitching change, which ultimately didn’t help much, as four batters later, Brock Thompson hit a wall-scraping home run to left field to walk it off. The hosts were eliminated, and Oklahoma State lived.
Ultimately, however, that game didn’t end up mattering. Duke dispatched Oklahoma State later that day to win the regional.
Everybody is going to remember that ninth inning between Georgia and Oklahoma State, though. For years to come, when people ask me about the Athens Regional in 2025, I’ll point to Ritchie and Thompson’s home runs as my favorite moments.
Oxford Regional
The SEC apocalypse continued in Mississippi.
Ole Miss earned the right to host this regional, but it didn’t earn the right to live another day due to Murray State barging in and making everything about them instead.
Murray State, a small school in the Missouri Valley Conference that managed to win the league by a wide margin this season, put itself on the map in Oxford this past weekend via several gritty victories against top-tier teams.
The first came on Friday evening, when the Racers (what a cool mascot, by the way) battled hard to defeat Ole Miss 9-6, sending the host Rebels to the loser’s bracket right off the bat.
A hitter’s paradise ensued the next day against ACC regular-season champion Georgia Tech, where both teams couldn’t stop hitting en route to a 13-11 win for Murray State.
Those two wins sent Murray State to the regional final, where Ole Miss, which had scratched and clawed its way out of the loser’s bracket, wanted revenge. And payback is what the Rebels delivered, at least on Sunday night, when Murray State fell 19-8 to set up a win-or-go-home matchup the next evening.
Now, this is where the fun begins. Right out of the gate, Murray State was on a mission. Two runs in the second, followed by three in the third, set up the Racers with a nice, cushy 5-1 lead. Ole Miss cut into that a bit in the fourth, but Murray State responded with four more in the fifth, another tally in the sixth, and two more in the seventh to take a 12-3 lead heading into the seventh-inning stretch.
In the pros, an eight-run advantage might be enough to make the leading team feel comfortable. In college, though, where bullpens are fickle and oftentimes unreliable, everything is still fair game.
Ole Miss erupted for five runs in the bottom of the seventh to cut into the lead big time, making it 12-8. Once Murray State failed to respond in the top of the eighth, that set up the Rebels to continue to chip away. Three more runs crossed the plate in the home half of the eighth, and all of a sudden, Murray State’s once-massive lead had dwindled to just one.
But all of that resurgence from Ole Miss still wasn’t enough. Murray State pitcher Graham Kelham shut down the Rebels in the bottom of the ninth, and the celebration ensued. Murray State, the four-seed in the Oxford regional, had done it.
Baton Rouge Regional
On paper, LSU’s path to a super regional was as easy as could be. It played two games against Little Rock, which finished the season with a 27-34 record, and another against a Dallas Baptist team that looked dead on arrival the second it landed in Baton Rouge. Despite that allegedly painless path, the Tigers certainly didn’t do themselves any favors.
After cruising in the first two games against Little Rock (7-0) and Dallas Baptist (12-0), LSU went into the regional final with its head held high. It’d be facing Little Rock again, a team it had crushed just two days prior. Little Rock would be on basically no rest, too. Man, this was going to be a cakewalk!
Except it wasn’t. Little Rock came to play on Sunday, beating LSU 10-4 to force a regional-deciding game the next night. But come on! It’s Little Rock, for crying out loud. It’s going to be easy, right? Right?
Not particularly. While LSU did end up coming out on top, the road to victory was paved with shattered glass. Through two innings of play, LSU was down 5-1 to a Little Rock team that hadn’t won 30 games. Things were bleak, and the folks at Alex Box Stadium were getting antsy.
“Have no fear,” LSU said, “we’ll fix it!”
And fix it, the Tigers did.
Three runs in the fourth, courtesy of a three-RBI double by Ethan Frey, completely changed the game, as LSU would end up mounting a comeback. Later, in the sixth, Luis Hernandez launched a solo home run to tie the game at five. The next inning, Steven Milam hit an RBI groundout to give the Tigers the lead. Then in the eighth, Hernandez hit what at the time was considered the dagger, a solo homer, his second of the night, to left field to make it 7-5. Finally, in the ninth, the real dagger to the heart of Little Rock’s hopes landed, when Jared Jones hit a moon shot to left-center field and Hernandez drove in yet another run, this time on a single. Just like that, it was 10-6, and the LSU Tigers were moving on.
Clemson Regional
Country roads, take me home To the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mama Take me home, country roads
Was that corny? Probably. Just wanted an excuse to shoehorn that song in. West Virginia won the Clemson Regional, if you hadn’t guessed that already.
Yet again, another regional host, this time the Clemson Tigers, fell victim to a lower-seeded team. It was truly an epidemic this past weekend. I’m fine with it.
West Virginia was the best team in the Big 12 during the regular season, and it was, frankly, disrespected by the selection committee when it came time to pick the bracket. By the way the Mountaineers performed in Clemson this past weekend, it was clear that they deserved to host. Alas, they weren’t awarded that honor, and it didn’t even matter.
It wasn’t smooth sailing, however. West Virginia played two really good teams — Kentucky and Clemson — en route to this regional championship. Both games against Kentucky, in particular, came down to the wire, with the second contest between the two being a classic that West Virginia baseball fans will remember for a long time.
Down by five runs in the bottom of the eighth, West Virginia mounted a comeback for the ages. Six runs scored in the frame, erasing the 12-7 deficit and turning it into a 13-12 lead. That eighth inning really was death by a thousand cuts for Kentucky. Just take a look at the play-by-play of the frame:
Watch out for the Mountaineers. That’s a really good baseball program up there in Morgantown, and they’re just itching to prove it.
Fayetteville Regional
I won’t dwell on this regional too much due to the fact that I wrote all about Arkansas’ triumph in Fayetteville yesterday morning, so if you haven’t read that yet, click the link below and check it out.
Back to Normal in Fayetteville
Everybody can breathe a sigh of relief because, after two years of complete disappointment, the Arkansas baseball team is back to winning regionals.
This Arkansas team is different; I can just feel it in my bones. The doubters will say that no matter what they do, the Razorbacks will always be fool’s gold. Not in my eyes. This is a squad that’s capable of not only reaching the College World Series but winning it outright.
Now, doing that is, of course, easier said than done. But why not just do it, right? Like, come on, Hogs! Throw us all a bone for once.
Knoxville Regional
Knoxville seems like a lovely place to live. The Smoky Mountains elicit such charm and spectacle that I believe I could dwell there and be happy all my days. Maybe that’s why Tennessee’s baseball program is so successful; they’re just so enamored with the scenery that it causes them to be excellent ballplayers.
Probably not. But we all need some sort of explanation as to why this school is so good at baseball. While there’s probably a complicated reason to be found somewhere, the actual answer might be that Tony Vitello is the best head coach in the nation.
Vitello led Tennessee to a national title last year, and while the Volunteers aren’t as good as they were a year ago, they’re certainly not to be trifled with. Catch them on a good day, and your favorite team is bound to give up buckets of runs. Heck, catch them on a bad day, and there’s still a pretty decent chance that things will go poorly.
Tennessee’s offense was electric in Knoxville this past weekend, where it put up nine runs on Friday against Miami (OH), 10 on Saturday versus Cincinnati, and then six and 11, respectively, in the two games it played against Wake Forest. Not once did that unit look inept over the four games it played during the Knoxville Regional.
Arkansas will certainly have its hands full against the Volunteers, and that matchup should be juicy, juicy, juicy.
If you’ve missed any of the other college baseball posts on the site, you can check them all out at the links below:
