By Hunt Palmer
OMAHA, Neb.—After 12 games in six days, there are two left to compete for the national championship at the 2025 College World Series.
LSU (seven titles) is bidding to inch closer to the USC (12 titles) as the standard in the sport. Coastal Carolina is bidding to be sure everyone knows its 2016 CWS championship wasn’t a fluke.
Jay Johnson knows that. He was in third base dugout when the Chanticleers stormed the field from their first base dugout nine years ago. Arizona’s tying run was on third base.
Sunday evening or Monday night, college baseball will have a new national champion—Coastal Carolina or LSU.
STREAKING
This version of Coastal Carolina is sizzling hot. The Chanticleers are the only remaining unbeaten in the 2025 NCAA Tournament field. Since 2003, when the championship went to a three-game series, only three teams have gone a perfect 10-0 in the postseason—UCLA in 2013, Arizona in 2012, South Carolina in 2011.
The 23-game win streak Coastal entered Omaha carrying is the longest all-time. That has been bumped to 26 games now, the third longest in Division 1 over the last five seasons.
STEP UP
There aren’t many arms like Kade Anderson, but Coastal hasn’t exactly seen one. In the CWS opener, the Chanticleers got Owen Kramkowski from Arizona. His ERA on the year is 5.48, and opponents hit .304 against him. That’s doesn’t qualify.
Samuel Dutton was leaking oil for Auburn by the time Coastal got to Plainsmen Park for the super regional. Florida didn’t win enough games to even meet Coastal in the Conway Regional. Instead, the Chanticleers drew East Carolina (35-27) twice.
The only fairly comparable arm to Anderson that Coastal has seen was Ethan Kleinschmit of Oregon State. He’s the Beavers’ No. 2 starter behind freshman phenom Dax Whitney. Kleinschmit is a sophomore left-hander who finished the year with 113 strikeouts in 91 innings. He locked up Florida State in the super regional with six innings of two-hit baseball where he struck out 11 and only allowed one earned run.
Coastal tagged him for six runs in 4.2 innings, but only two of the runs were earned.
Oregon State made two VERY routine errors on the infield, a throw from shortstop and a tailor-made double play ball to second that went through the wickets. A wild pitch also plated a run.
The Chanticleers entered Omaha with the worst strikeout rate in the field against left-handed pitching. They’ll see America’s best southpaw on Saturday.
BRUISES AND BASERUNNERS
This group has an offensive playbook. Getting hit by pitches is on the first page. Coastal set the national record for hit by pitches Wednesday when they were hit four times by Louisville to run their season-long total to 176, topping UC-Irvine’s record set last year.
Blake Barthol and Walker Mitchell are both sub-.290 hitters facing a heavy-Sun Belt schedule, but they’ve combined to get hit by 50 pitches this year.
Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall said after his team defeated Louisville on Wednesday, “Today we got 10 frees, six walks and four hit by pitches. We’ve got to earn frees.”
LSU will have to pitch inside, as all pitchers do, but don’t expect Coastal to do much getting out of the way.
In fact, Coastal has been called out for leaning into pitches multiple times in the postseason.
REAL ROTATION
Coastal is a little bit underwhelming offensively for a number of reasons. That isn’t the case on the mound. This Chanticleer rotation is legitimate.
Jacob Morrison is the ace. The was the Sun Belt Pitcher of the Year and will be a high draft choice.
Jacob Morrison of Coastal Carolina just delivered my favorite outing of the CWS so far. 7 2/3 of one run ball with 7 KS on 109 pitches. Whoever drafts him outside of the 1st round this July could be getting one of the steals of the draft pic.twitter.com/eSKxN5V6uR
— Billy (@BMock98) June 16, 2025
The 6-foot-8 right hander has been brilliant. He’s 12-0 with a 2.08ERA for the season. He’s thrown 104 innings and allowed 24 earned runs on 73 hits. He’s recorded 102 strikeouts and has an opposing batting average of .194.
If you combine his last two outings at Auburn and against Oregon State: 13.2IP, 11H, 2ER, 13K, 3BB.
He retired 16 straight Beavers in the middle innings and worked into the eighth.
He’s got a fastball in the mid 90s with two good breaking balls. When he pitches, Coastal is 17-1, the lone loss coming against North Carolina when he allowed three runs in five innings back in March.
Cameron Flukey is next. He’s a 6-foot-6 righty with a 3.29 ERA And 109 strikeouts in 95.2IP. The lanky hurler is not as dominant as Morrison, but he did work five innings of three-run baseball at Auburn and came out of the bullpen against Arizona to work four innings one two-run ball in the CWS opener.
From a “stuff perspective”, these two would look the part in the SEC. They’ll very, very likely oppose Anderson and Anthony Eyanson in the first two games.
STATION TO STATION
This Coastal club entered the College World Series with the worst slugging percentage in the field by a sizeable margin. They ranked 125th in the country in slugging. UCLA at 84th was seventh, and the other six teams were in the top 53.
Coastal hasn’t homered in the CWS. They have clubbed some huge doubles. They got a bases-clearing double in the first inning against Oregon State and a two-run double in the eighth to make a one-run lead a three-run lead over Arizona in the opener.
They get hit by pitches. They draw walks. They hit singles. They run the bases extremely well. Only three hitters in the projected Saturday lineup are hitting better than .300 on the season.
BACKSTOP BODINE
Caden Bodine is just the fifth catcher to hit lead off in the College World Series since 1974. He’s a finalist for the Buster Posey National Collegiate Catcher of the Year and won the Rawlings Gold Glove at the position on Wednesday.
He’s the best position player on this Coastal team. He leads the squad with a .326 batting average and .459 on base percentage.
He’s not a great runner, just 2-for-9 on stolen base attempts, but he’s the heartbeat of the Coastal club.
CLOSING CARBONE
The rotation is strong, so is the closer. Dominick Carbone has earned five saves this year and struck out 50 in 40 innings. He’s generally been a 1-to-2 inning guy, and with his help, Coastal is 40-0 this year when leading after eight.
He’s a 5-foot-10 lefty who can get the fastball to 94 and has a good straight changeup and sweepy slider.
Coastal has won the last 11 games he’s pitched in and 24 of his 27 appearances of the season.
LSU will see the lefty at some point over the weekend.
CLOSING ON COASTAL
In summation, this is a red hot team with a real rotation that LSU will run into, and, unlike the last two title series, the pitching staffs on both sides will be ready to go.
Coastal leads all teams in runs scored in this CWS, and their ERA of 3.00 is also best in the field. The Chanticleers rank second in the country in ERA despite playing in a small ballpark in Conway.
They want to be pesky and scrappy at the plate and on the bases. They want to dominate on the mound. They’ve done both for two months. Their last loss came in a midweek game to College of Charlston on April 22. They haven’t lost a weekend game since April 6.
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