Bracket Breakdown: Murray State Racers

By Hunt Palmer

The 2025 College World Series fires up Friday afternoon.

Charles Schwab Field will be buzzing for what feels like a wide-open event. LSU’s side of the bracket, which includes No. 3 seed Arkansas, No. 15 seed UCLA and Murray State, gets things rolling Saturday as part of a double header.

One of those four teams will emerge from the bracket and play in the championship series beginning Saturday, June 21.

We’ll take a look at all four teams as part of our Bracket Breakdown series, examining their path to this point, strengths, weaknesses and, for the other three teams, their matchup with LSU.

We start with this year’s most improbable Omaha journey—Murray State.

HOW’D THEY GET HERE

The drive from Murray, Kent,, to Omaha is a hair under 10 hours. That seems far more doable than Murray State actually qualifying for the College World Series.

Murray State (44-15) has only made the NCAA Tournament twice since 1980.

The Racers are just the fourth No. 4 regional seed to advance to Omaha (Fresno State, Stony Brook, Oral Roberts). They did so by beating Ole Miss in the regional opener, toppling ACC champion Georgia Tech in the winners’ bracket game a day later and surviving a Monday, game seven finish against the hosts in Oxford. The Racers scored 42 runs in five games in the regional after finishing eighth in the 10-team Missouri Valley in conference batting average. They then traveled to Durham to face Duke and rebounded from a 7-4 loss on Saturday to win the final two games and take the super regional.

After dropping their first two conference series of the season to Evansville and Illinois State, the Racers did win the next six series to end the year.

The bats started scolding in the conference tournament. They scored 40 runs in four games to sweep their way into the field of 64.

This is the Racers’ first ever College World Series berth, and their 44 wins on the season are also a program best.

WHY THEY’LL ADVANCE

It’s got to be the bats.

Murray State’s 11-game run (including the conference tournament) has been nothing short of sensational offensively. The Racers, who were hitting .276 as a team entering NCAA play, are hitting .336 over 11 games with 20 home runs and 32 doubles. They’re averaging exactly 10 runs per game, and six of those 11 games have come against SEC and ACC competition.

Seven of the nine everyday players are hitting .286 or better for the postseason. Those include Dustin Mercer who is 25-for-50 (.500) with nine double and 12 home runs and leadoff man Jonathan Hogart who has clubbed eight home runs in 11 games. He had 14 in the previous 48.

It’s an all-time heater by this Racer bunch that is playing loose, free and phenomenally well on offense.

On the mound, Murray State is doing everything it can to get the ball to Graham Kelham. He’s been Superman. The right-handed closer has been called on in six of the 11 postseason games and has worked 16 innings of five-run baseball (2.81ERA). He’s struck out 26 and walked just four. Opponents are hitting .203 against him. He’s been credited with four saves.

He’s been used a ton. In the regional, he finished Friday’s game with nine pitches. Then he came back Sunday and threw 34 before firing 70 in the clincher the next day. In the super regional, he threw 43 on Sunday and then fired 47 more on Monday.

That’s 203 pitches over five appearances. But you can bet Kelham will get the ball at some point in the first two games.

Lastly, Murray State is fielding .979 for the season. That’s excellent work. They’ve only made two errors in their last 10 games. Hitting .336 and making less than an error a week will win some college baseball games.

WHY THEY WON’T

The pitching has struggled.

Three Racers have combined to start all 11 games of this postseason.

• Kane Elmy: three starts, 6.17ERA
• Nic Schutte: three starts, 9.00ERA
• Isaac Silva: five starts, 9.82 ERA

It’s almost impossible to sweep a league tournament and win two NCAA weekends when your pitching looks like that statistically.

Aside from Kelham and Jackson Ugo, who got six outs in a blowout loss to Ole Miss, no Racer pitcher enters Omaha with a postseason ERA under 6.00.

Schutte and Silva have been their top two guys all season, but those two have not matched up with power conference offenses.

And finally, the longball sometimes doesn’t play in Omaha. It depends on the day and the wind. Murray State has been launching the ball out of the ballpark in Oxford and Durham. That may not work as well at Charles Schwab.

THE LSU MATCHUP

The Tigers won’t see Murray State on Saturday, but they could match up on Monday if both teams win or both teams lose.

Assuming the Racers and Tigers maintain their rotation, that would mean Anthony Eyanson against Isaac Silva, the senior transfer from Troy.

Silva started Saturday of the regional against Georgia Tech and came back to start Monday’s regional final against Ole Miss. He worked a total of 8.1 innings in those outings allowing nine earned runs on seven hits. He walked six and struck out nine. The Rebels dinged him for a pair of homers.

Duke got after him pretty good on Sunday. He allowed six earned runs on six hits including three homers over 5.1 innings.

He’s a right-hander with a ¾ arm slot and a 91 mph fastball. His slider is his put away pitch, and his regular season was better than his postseason.

Should LSU see Murray State later in the week than Monday, the pitching will almost assuredly be on fumes. This team is being powered almost exclusively by its offense at this point.

The Racer offense feels like a pretty good matchup for Eyanson. He’s a strikeout pitcher, and Murray State struck out exactly 10 times in all three games against Ole Miss. They also fanned 10 times in game three of the super regional against Duke. Plus, despite the fourth inning on Sunday when West Virginia popped a pair of home runs, Eyanson has kept the ball in the ballpark exceptionally well all season.