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’23 Omaha Storylines

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Eight Omaha Observations For 2023

It requires nearly one-hundred fifty baseball games across the next month to determine a national champion. For those unfamiliar with the format, the first 100 plus of those will take place this coming weekend as four team double-elimination tournaments hosted at sixteen regional sites spread out across the country. These regional sites are earned across the course of a long and grueling regular season. The sixteen teams emerging from this gauntlet will square off in eight three game series, also held on campus sites, to determine who survives and advances on the “Road To Omaha.” Those who prevail meet in a pair of four team double-elimination brackets in America’s heartland. Once two teams are left standing, they will battle in a best of three National Championship Series.

College baseball’s pursuit of a championship is a four week journey unlike anything else in sport. It builds toward a ten day celebration in Omaha known simply as the College World Series.

Consider that 305 NCAA Division 1 college baseball teams began the year with championship aspirations. They fought through league play to become one of thirty conference champions awarded an automatic qualifier for the annual tournament. Those who did not win their league endeavored to build a solid résumé across a fifty-plus game season in hopes of being awarded one of 34 at-large bids for entrance into the tournament. Now those sixty-four teams are left to settle it on the field. It all culminates in the “Greatest Show On Dirt.”

Before the elite among college baseball’s stars hear their names called in the upcoming MLB draft and turn their attention toward contract negotiations; they play once more for community and campus. Most college baseball players will be putting the finishing touches on the organized athletic competition chapter of life altogether. The real world awaits. These student-athletes play once more for the name on the front of the jersey. They play, at most, just a few more weeks for local pride, league supremacy and a lasting legacy. Let the games begin.

In terms of more teams, more host sites and more championships in this tournament’s recent history; no league matches the SEC. The conference’s impressive dominance of the sport continues. Consider these numbers: a record eight host sites were awarded the SEC in the 2023 tournament. That’s half the designated national seeds. Ten total teams into the tournament from the league ties the all-time mark for entries from a single conference, a feat accomplished only four times in the sport’s history.

If the SEC’s sheer presence is not enough, take a moment to explore the nature of the league’s success in recent editions of the tournament. Eight of the last fourteen national champions have come from the SEC. The league has produced sixteen CWS finalists in that fourteen season span. The five most recent tournaments have produced four champions which hail from the SEC. Perhaps most remarkably, it has been a different SEC club each time.

Further, six different SEC schools have won national titles across the last decade and a half (Ole Miss ‘22, Mississippi State ‘21, Vanderbilt ‘14 & ‘19, Florida ‘17, South Carolina ‘10 & ‘11 and LSU ‘09). One of the strongest teams in this year’s field, Arkansas was a secured pop foul away in ‘18 from making it seven. For those keeping a tally, that’s half the league’s member institutions recently in position to claim a national championship.

Just how powerfully positioned is the SEC heading into this year’s tournament? It would be of little surprise should the league boast half the field in Omaha (4 of 8) for a second consecutive season. Three super regionals have the potential to be head to head conference showdowns. Don’t forget, the league has notched 8 of the 16 host locations. Four of those teams would host supers as well, if the chalk holds. The two programs not currently slated for the hosting line (Tennessee & Texas A&M) would not be shocking Omaha arrivals either. Both have made the trip west within the past couple seasons and Tennessee was the tournament’s number one overall seed this time last year.

Perhaps nowhere has the league’s strength been on display more clearly than the three all-SEC national championship series played since 2011 (SC-FLA in ‘11 / FLA-LSU in ‘17 / MISS ST-VANDY in ‘21). Few who follow the sport closely would be taken-aback by a similar outcome in late June this time around.

For the second consecutive season, college baseball has a consensus number one team heading into the tournament. The ACC regular season champion Deacons (47-10) had likely rather not reflect upon how that worked out for the Vols last year—despite the fact that league comrade Notre Dame was the culprit. The Winston-Salem crew may also want to refrain from looking up the history of effectiveness for the number one overall seed under the current tournament format.

Since the tournament embraced the current format in 1999, the top seed has claimed the crown just once. That very first edition saw another current ACC member, Miami, hoist the trophy. It has not happened since. The top seed has only appeared in the finals twice during that stretch, failing to even reach Omaha nine times. It’s the age old “target on the back” challenge for a squad which dominated a much deeper Atlantic Coast Conference throughout the season. Keep in mind, with the Hurricanes not having entered the league yet in the late 90’s; Virginia’s 2015 title is the lone ACC crown since Wake last climbed the hill in the 1950’s.

Wake Forest itself is an interesting case study. Poised to chase the school’s first title since 1955, they’ve emerged as this year’s top seed from outside the meat grinder that is the SEC. The last time this occured was 2017 (Oregon State). The Deacons pitching staff is marked by elite arms, excelling in a hitter-friendly ballpark. As the numbers reveal, this club, like the Wake Forest teams of yesteryear, can still swing it. Wake complements its national best 2.82 team ERA by also resting solidly inside the top 15 in runs scored per game (8.9) and home runs (110).

The term “complete” keeps popping up around this program. The question remains, can Wake Forest complete the task with a first title since the early days of this tournament when the paint was still fresh on Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium. Now baseball fans begin to find out just how well the Demon Deacon brand of baseball translates in the high-stakes environment of the NCAA tournament.

Regardless of Wake Forest’s ultimate fate, the 2023 College World Series will produce a new champion. In fact, the last two teams to dogpile in Omaha did not even qualify for this year’s tournament. When comparing college baseball to the other premier sports in the land, how’s that for parity?

College baseball has not seen a repeat champion in well over a decade. South Carolina remains the last team to accomplish this feat. The Gamecocks made their mark on the sport by closing down historic Rosenblatt Stadium as an extra inning walk-off winner and opening up the downtown destination with a second crown.

Will this year’s new champion be a familiar face or a first time champion? This will be determined over the next four weeks. The most likely candidates for a first time title at this point would be Arkansas, Clemson, Alabama, Auburn, Indiana State and Kentucky from among the national seeds. Tournament history, however, reminds fans not to sleep on the relatively unknowns and previously unheralded entries.

For the first time since 2001, and only the fifth time ever, not a single club is making an inaugural appearance in the tournament (UC San Diego was poised to carry that flag out of the Big West, but has not yet reached the threshold for post-season eligibility following its transition to Division I, sending familiar west coast power Cal State Fullerton instead). As a result, the “first time winner conversation” shifts squarely to potential Omaha arrivals. It is worth a glance at some of the perennial powers still seeking a first journey to college baseball’s promised land.

Though folks in Greenville, NC are likely tired of hearing it, no team has appeared in more tourneys, hosted more regionals or played in more super regional environments without reaching Omaha than their Pirates. East Carolina enters the tournament as a two-seed in the Charlottesville Regional hosted by UVA. DBU is another club that has been knocking on the door of Omaha for some time. The Patriots most recently hosted the rare “road Super Regional” in 2021, making Columbia, South Carolina a home away from home. Dallas Baptist came up just short of a first trip to the CWS— at the hands of those same familiar Hoos, no less. A new conference, yet same result of a regular season title has positioned the Pats to go to work in Stillwater as the two-seed alongside the Big 12’s sole regional host Oklahoma State.

Heightened parity in college baseball, as evidenced by countless mid-week surprises across the course of the regular season, ultimately produced ten conferences with multiple bids and just twenty single-bid leagues. It also produced the truest Cinderella the sport has ever seen. Tulane makes the short trip over to Baton Rouge with less than twenty wins and an even forty losses, the most setbacks for a tournament team in the sport’s history. These never-say-die believers rode a Green Wave all the way to the American tournament title.

The improbable “last four in” to “last team standing” run by Ole Miss a season ago provided college baseball with its 31st different champion all time. Whatever happens on the road to Omaha in ‘23, the South Carolina Gamecocks status as the most recent team to repeat is safe for at least one more year.

Speaking of a team from the Carolinas, it is worth noting that four such clubs are hosting regionals. That is a firm one-fourth of the regional hosts located within just a few short hours drive. This region of the country is also home to the aforementioned number one overall seed.

The Palmetto State alone features three host sites. While Carolina and Clemson may be the key headliners—don’t forget Coastal Carolina. The Chanticleers magical run in 2016 has positioned the Conway crew as the most recent team from the Carolinas to host a championship parade. Though heading in opposite directions at the moment; who can forget the multiple years South Carolina and Clemson both arrived in Omaha, taking one of the more intense rivalries in college sports to an even grander stage. Something similar could happen again.

Though the traditional college baseball standard bearers from the Carolinas, these Gamecocks and Tigers aren’t even the most likely candidates to emerge from the southeast region in this edition of the tournament. Wake “leads the pack,” a reference bringing to mind the pair of NC based teams in the Columbia Regional playing with a bit of a chip on their shoulders. In very different ways, both NC State and Campbell have felt snubbed in recent years. Don’t be surprised if either of those teams emerge victorious from the neighboring state capitol. Clemson will have to overcome a talented squad from Rocky Top, avenging their recent grid-iron battle for orange supremacy—a 31-14 setback in the Orange Bowl, which marked the start of the new calendar year—in the process. Beyond this piece of business, a couple of pesky ASUN and Conference USA championship clubs in Charlotte and Lipscomb must be dealt with as well. All of that would be required of first year head coach Erik Bakich’s ACC Tournament title winning crew, just to set up a potential date in the super-regional round with another group of orange-clad Tigers from down on the plains.

In all, there are 11 teams in this year’s tournament from the Carolinas. This is by far the most of any specifically connected region nationally. Texas/Louisiana or Texas/Oklahoma would be the next closest comparisons, yet remarkably without a single regional hosts site in the Lone Star state, either combination renders just the one host site between the neighboring states. Here’s the breakdown of tournament teams by state/region: (11) from the Carolinas (8 total North Carolina representatives, with Wake hosting / 3 South Carolina based clubs, with South Carolina, Clemson and Coastal all hosting); Texas has (6); followed by Alabama, California and Louisiana with (4) schools each.

A wider lens reveals just two regionals located outside what most in the sport consider to be its Southern footprint. Keep in mind, Kentucky is in the SEC. This leaves a single regional on the West Coast (Stanford) and one other host in a place where true cold weather baseball is played (Indiana State). While one could argue this baseball season was among the coldest and wettest in recent memory, the regional host outcome was as predictably Southern in flavor as the game has ever seen.

Nearly seventy-five percent of regional winners under the existing college baseball tournament format have been hosts, and yes, the sample size is now large enough to mark trends. Two decades plus into the current approach, 136 regional hosts have advanced to Omaha, compared to 48 from the other three seeds in regional play.

In case the specifics are of interest, the importance of seeding—in essence hosting—is revealed in these numbers: 136 #1’s, 30 #2’s, 16 #3’s and 2 #4’s have reached Omaha. For what its worth, the only four seeds were Stony Brook in 2011 and that unforgettable Fresno State team which claimed the title in 2008. Remember, Ole Miss won it all as a #3 seed last season, something both Oregon State (‘07) and Virginia (‘15) have also accomplished along the way, so anything can happen.

Ballparks have become the featured piece and most visible evidence of the multi-faceted “arms race” in full effect across college baseball. Hosting provides programs a unique opportunity to show them off. Certain fan bases can be difference-makers as well. It is impossible to quantify the value of playing these crucial games inside the home yard. Those under the impression ballpark designations make little difference have never witnessed the timely energy a packed house of passionate fans can often provide during historic moments inside the hallowed cathedrals of the college game. These true impact home venues are spread out like rare gems all across the American landscape, from sea to shining sea. 

Regional sites are awarded. They serve as a fitting reward for a job well done in the regular season. Host sites for the super regional round are determined by pre-tournament national seeding these days. If non-seeded teams advance, the NCAA announces home designations for the final on-campus round at 10AM on Tuesday June 6th.

Sticking with the southern supremacy topic: it is worth revisiting the earlier mention that last season’s champion, the Ole Miss Rebels, went from “last four in” to “last team standing” in ‘22. Ole Miss won the tournament as a regional #3 seed in Coral Gables and a road super-regional club—if in name only—at Hattiesburg. Hotty Toddy was unseeded nationally and an unheralded ninth place finisher in the SEC when they loaded up the bus in Oxford to begin the tournament journey this time last year. Then, as the locals say, “they let the Rebs get hot.”

It begs the question, who is playing the same type of baseball in 2023? Which teams are peaking at the right moment? While Oral Roberts (winners of a national best 18 straight) and Clemson (16 in a row) own the longest winning streaks, that may not be the most enviable position. Baseball is a sport where streaks are made to be broken and teams generally lose a game or two along the way to a championship (don’t tell the Rebs that, as they remained unbeaten all the way into the final few days in Omaha). Looking beyond streaks, the real question is, who else is still around and playing their best baseball down the stretch?

First, however, it is worth a quick discussion of who is not. There are noticeable omissions in this year’s tournament field. For the second consecutive season, the reigning champion is MISSing. Only heaven knows whether the Magnolia State programs struck some type of mystical bargain for the right to reign, as baseball superstition often suggests, but both have now missed the tournament the year following their triumph. The flagship programs from the baseball rich state of Mississippi are absent from the bracket this year. It falls upon Southern Miss to extend head coach Scott Berry’s farewell tour to the max if the state is to make it three in a row, as neither Ole Miss or Mississippi State even qualified for the SEC tournament, missing Hoover together for the first time since 1986.

Speaking of streaks, FSU’s run of consecutive post-season berths came to an end this season. June baseball, at least somewhere, for the fans in Tallahassee had become a rite of passage. Florida State had appeared in every edition of the NCAA Tournament since 1977. First year head coach and former ‘Noles shortstop Link Jarrett took over at his alma mater just one season after leading Notre Dame to Omaha. Jarrett’s track record would indicate it is simply a matter of time before this club begins to win again, and win big. It has been true at every stop in his career. This year’s tourney will certainly be a little different without the Seminoles familiar garnet and gold on the road to Omaha.

As for the original question, keeping it in the premier conference, Auburn and Alabama look a lot like the Ole Miss team fans watched surge into Omaha a season ago. Butch Thompson’s Tigers were a part of last year’s Omaha field and catapulted from around .500 in the SEC mid-season, once all hands were on deck. Alabama has handled the unique coaching situation the regular season’s final month presented with gusto, going 10-4 down the stretch under the direction of Jason Jackson. Texas A&M will be headed to the west coast, though only after going nearly coast to coast in the SEC Tournament—from elimination day to a championship Sunday battle with Vanderbilt. Wouldn’t be wise to forget the VandyBoys or Arkansas either. Though Nashville will be the only regional site featuring four teams riding the momentum of conference tournament titles, the Commodores generally take it to a new level when given the opportunity to play at Hawkins Field. The Hogs will also be home, with Baum-Walker rocking for a team that has seemingly been on the cusp of its first ever title for nearly two decades.

For all the information worth glancing at and all the data worth combing for trends and nuggets, this is a sport in which anything can happen. On the backside of “play ball,” fans just never know. It is the main reason why, year after year, those who possess a passion for the game return to this hallowed ground.

There is still so much to be determined as the tournament plays out across the next several weeks. What will happen to the favorites? Who will emerge as the surprises? Where will this edition of the tournament discover its heroes? When will it become clear exactly where this season stacks up in the great history of the game? Who will stand supreme when the dust settles on another memorable college baseball journey? 

No sure answers are available until the games actually begin. But, then again, isn’t that the beauty of both life and baseball.

As hope springs eternal upon the often elusive dream of a championship chase, one truth remains. The joy is found in the journey itself. Amidst the twists and turns on the winding road between here and Omaha, lifetime memories come from embracing the unknown.

Just one thing more remains to be said…Play ball!

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