Tickets were punched. Tears were shed. And John Denver echoed through the hills of West Virginia. Ole Miss became the first SEC team to claim their spot in Omaha this year. Here’s what you may have missed from Saturday’s NCAA super regionals.
Best sport in the world
This style of tournament wouldn’t work in football. We don’t want feel good stories in the College Football Playoff nearly as much as we want good teams. But this isn’t football, and college baseball proved once again on Saturday that there are few things parallel to the excitement this sport has to offer.
Troy and West Virginia became the first two teams to punch their ticket to Omaha for the 2026 College World Series. Both will be going for the first time in program history. The celebrations that took place at each location were incredible. Little ol’ Troy had a sellout crowd of over 7,000 people which is almost 5,000 more than their max capacity. Meanwhile there were as many West Virginia fans outside the stadium in Morgantown as there were inside.
Not sure what the total count was for attendance, but several thousand fans became a choir singing “Country Roads” in a moment most college baseball fans won’t soon forget.
Absolute cinema in Athens
Remember those Buffalo Wild Wing March Madness commercials where someone would say, “Hey, I don’t want this game to end?” And the bartender hits a magical button that extends the game, so we can keep watching. That was Georgia and Mississippi State on Saturday. What a game that unfolded in Athens at Foley Field.
Going into Saturday, teams that held a seven run lead in the NCAA Tournament were 149-0. They are now 149-1.
Mississippi State’s lineup showed up, and Georgia may have been late to the party but they arrived in a very big way. The Bulldogs from Starkville didn’t seem intimidated by Georgia despite being 0-4 against them this season. The two teams combined for 11 home runs in the 13-12 victory for Georgia. Two of those came off the bat of Michael O’Shaughnessy who was filling in for Tre Phelps who was serving a one game suspension after an ejection in the final game of regionals.
The five home runs from Georgia brings their season total to 170 on the year and just 18 away from LSU’s all-time single season record.
Where does Auburn go from here?
Auburn had an incredible season. The Tigers had the best pitching staff in college baseball throughout the regular season, and had a lineup that was plenty dangerous to get to Omaha.
Then the postseason began, and they turned into a shell of themselves. At the risk of making too many pop culture references, it was like the Monstars from Space Jam stealing the powers of all the NBA players, or Austin Powers losing his mojo. The pitching staff that allowed more than ten runs in a game just twice all season gave up 13 in each of its first two games in the regional. The Tigers became an anomaly being able to escape their regional after losing their first game. That’s something only seven percent of teams had done in NCAA regionals since 1999.
The pitching staff returned to form in the super regionals against Ole Miss. As soon as that happened though, the bats disappeared. The Tigers went 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position over two games against Ole Miss. An offense that began to shine late in the season scored just seven runs in the two games this year.
Auburn is now 0-4 in super regionals in the last two seasons. In those four games they’ve scored six, one, four and three runs. Clearly something becomes an issue in May for Auburn. To make matters worse they now have to watch their rivals Georgia and Alabama play on Sunday with each being just one win away from Omaha.
Sunday Schedule
11:00 a.m. – No. 14 Mississippi State at No. 3 Georgia (ESPN)
2:00 p.m. – Southern Cal at No. 5 UNC (ESPN)
3:00 p.m. – St. John’s at No. 7 Alabama (ESPN2)
5:00 p.m. – Oklahoma at No. 15 Kansas (ESPN)
8:00 p.m. – No. 11 Oregon at No. 6 Texas (ESPN)
