Men's College World Series preview: Storylines and players to watch as games begin Friday in Omaha

Yahoo

21 hours ago

Four months ago, 307 programs across the country took the field for another exciting season of Division I baseball. Now, less than 3% of those programs are still playing, with an intriguing group of eight schools set to battle it out in Omaha for the national championship.
Last year's Men's College World Series field featured four teams from the SEC and four teams from the ACC, eliciting concerns that too much of the talent had become concentrated in the power conferences and that parity would be impossible to achieve in this era of college baseball. The 2025 season represented a refreshing rebuke of that notion, with the top-25 rankings enduring dramatic shake-ups on a weekly basis and a highly entertaining postseason culminating in a World Series field with a healthy amount of conference variety.
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Only the SEC has multiple teams in Omaha (Arkansas and LSU). Five other conferences — the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Sun Belt and Missouri Valley — have representation in the field, and the last spot belongs to a perennial powerhouse in Oregon State, which competed as an independent this season following the disbandment of the Pac-12.
Here's a look at the eight teams hoping to dogpile in Omaha.
Arizona Wildcats
First game: vs. Coastal Carolina, 2 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN
Player to watch: CF Aaron Walton
Among Wildcats bats eligible for this year's MLB Draft, right fielder Brendan Summerhill and shortstop Mason White entered this season with notably more acclaim than Walton, having raised their profiles since arriving on campus in Tucson as freshmen. But Walton — a transfer from Samford — had a huge breakout this spring and is now also well-positioned to hear his name called during the first handful of rounds next month. He's an excellent athlete capable of impacting the game on both sides of the ball, as evidenced by his three-homer game vs. Cal Poly during the regionals and some outstanding glovework in the outfield against North Carolina in the super regional. As Arizona's No. 2 hitter sandwiched between Summerhill and White atop the lineup, Walton could be a difference-maker for the Wildcats in Omaha.
Storyline to follow: Head coach Chip Hale stands out among skippers
With the exception of Oregon State skipper Mitch Canham, who spent four years coaching in the Seattle Mariners organization before taking the head job in Corvallis in 2019, the six other head coaches in Omaha are college baseball lifers. Then there's Hale, who is in just his fourth season at the helm for Arizona following more than three decades of professional playing and coaching experience, including managing the D-backs for two seasons and serving as the bench coach for the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals. Hale is hardly an outsider to this program, as he starred for the Wildcats as a player, including on the 1986 team that won the national championship. But relative to his peers in Omaha, Hale's extensive run in pro ball prior to becoming a college head coach makes him fairly unique and an intriguing character leading this year's squad in Omaha.
Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
First game: vs. Arizona, 2 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN
Player to watch: C Caden Bodine
One of the top catchers in this year's draft, Bodine homered in his first game of the year on Feb. 14 but then hit only two more long balls over the remainder of the regular season, prompting evaluators to question if he's worthy of a first-round selection. Then Bodine hit two homers in Coastal Carolina's dramatic 7-6 victory in Game 1 of the super regional against Auburn, demonstrating his slugging capabilities when the stakes were highest. Power will never be Bodine's calling card — his two elite skills are his receiving behind the dish and his bat-to-ball ability (7.8% career strikeout rate) — but a few more big swings on college baseball's biggest stage could go a long way toward ensuring an early selection in next month's draft.
Storyline to follow: Can the hottest team in college baseball stay scorching?
Outside of Bodine, the Chanticleers don't boast quite as much star power as some of the other squads in this year's field. But they arrive in Omaha with the best record in Division I, at 53-11, and riding a staggering 23-game winning streak. It has been nearly two months since Coastal Carolina's most recent loss, a midweek defeat at the College of Charleston, ensuring the Chanticleers enter the World Series with as much momentum as a team could hope for at this stage of the season. They cruised through the Sun Belt tournament unscathed, took down a fellow mid-major power in East Carolina in regionals and swiftly dispatched a daunting SEC foe (Auburn) on the road to clinch the trip to Omaha. Head coach Kevin Schnall said it best: This is not a Cinderella story. It's no accident that Coastal Carolina is the most recent mid-major to win the national championship (2016) and one of the most successful programs in the country over the past decade, regardless of conference affiliation. Don't be surprised if the Chanticleers make another deep run this year.
Oregon State Beavers
First game: vs. Louisville, 7 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN
Player to watch: SS Aiva Arquette
Collegians who stand 6-foot-5 with plus power and the defensive chops to play shortstop are extremely rare. That's why Arquette — who transferred to Corvallis last summer after spending two years at the University of Washington — is a strong bet to be the first college position player taken next month. And given the murky, plateaued top of this class, there remains a chance that he's the No. 1 pick.
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Arquette is the talisman of this offense, another difference-making player in a long lineage of Oregon State superstars such as Jacoby Ellsbury and Adley Rutschman. The lanky, Hawaiian-born infielder cranked 18 homers this season on his way to an impressive .354/.466/.658 line for the Beavers. He's downright humungous for a shortstop, which makes it easy to spot him on TV.
Storyline to follow: No conference, no problem
When realignment rocked college athletics in the summer of 2023, Oregon State's baseball team was left in an unenviable spot. Beginning in the mid-2000s under Head Coach Pat Casey, the program had blossomed into one of college baseball's true blue bloods. Since 2005, OSU has made the playoffs in 18 of 20 seasons. They have reached Omaha seven times and won three CWS titles. So when the Pac-12 went belly-up, Beaver Baseball was suddenly one of the most successful programs without a home.
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But in their first year of the post-realignment era, the Beavers thrived this season. Deciding to function as an independent (fellow Pac-12 ejectee Washington State opted to play with the Mountain West), Oregon State was forced to play an overwhelming number of games on the road. Finding weekends off within the conference schedules of opponents, the Beavers played just 19 of their 54 games at home. And now, after eight home games during regionals and super regionals, Oregon State will hit the road one last time in search of the program's fourth national championship.
Which team will be this year's college baseball national champion?
(James Pawelczyk/Yahoo Sports)
Louisville Cardinals
First game: vs. Oregon State, 7 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN
Player to watch: C Zion Rose
As a physical catcher with feel to hit, Rose emerged as a notable high school draft prospect a few years back. But instead of going pro, he matriculated to Louisville. Once there, he was solid as a freshman in 2024 and broke out massively this year as a power-speed monster. Rose smashed 12 homers while stealing 30 bases, the only player in the ACC to go 10/30. He has cooled off a bit from a power perspective during the playoffs, with fellow South Side kid Eddie King Jr. picking up the slack. But Rose is capable of making Omaha's Charles Schwab Field look mighty small in an instant.
Storyline to follow: Winning in a new era
When Louisville was bounced from the 2019 College World Series, head coach Dan McDonald did what many eliminated skippers do in their post-mortem pressers: He vowed the program would be back soon. And he was right, even if it took longer than expected. In the interim, a new paradigm emerged — conference realignment, NIL, the transfer portal. McDonald has been open about his unease toward trying to compete in this new landscape. A handful of disappointing seasons in the shadow of the pandemic only intensified concerns about Louisville's place in the restructured ACC. But this year, the Cardinals showed they can survive in this new era, knocking off No. 1 overall Vanderbilt in a road regional before dispatching Miami at home in the super. Louisville remains one of the most successful programs of the 21st century that has never won a title, and it would be mighty poetic if they pulled it off this year.
UCLA Bruins
First game: vs. Murray State, 2 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN
Player to watch: SS Roch Cholowsky
Still a sophomore, Cholowsky has a legitimate claim as college baseball's best player this season. The dynamic shortstop ripped 23 home runs, the most by a UCLA player since 2000, while winning Big Ten defensive player of the year awards. Cholowsky looks like a surefire top-10 pick for next year's draft, with the potential to go No. 1 overall. He's must-see TV whenever he's up at the dish. As we said with Arquette at Oregon State, smooth-fielding shortstops with power potential don't grow on trees.
Storyline to follow: No portal, no problem
This is the Bruins' first trip to Omaha since they won it all in 2013. That's because UCLA, like Louisville, experienced something of a dip coming out of the pandemic. As most college baseball programs turned toward the suddenly fruitful transfer portal to fill out rosters, UCLA held tight to its bread and butter: high school recruiting. Because of the prime location, name brand and program pedigree, head coach John Savage has always been able to attract high-end talent to campus. And he appears to have doubled down on that strategy in recent years, as only four players on the UCLA roster, three of whom are fifth-year players, transferred in from other schools. If you're looking for a school doing it the old-fashioned way, the Bruins are for you.
Murray State Racers
First game: vs. UCLA, 2 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN
Player to watch: RP Graham Kelham
Center fielder and leadoff man Jonathan Hogart is probably Murray State's most exhilarating player, but Kelham might be the most fascinating character on the Racers. Murray State's closer has surrendered just six runs since the beginning of April. He has worked at least two innings in all five of his postseason outings, including an incredibly impressive three-inning save against Duke in Game 2 of the super regional. In Game 3 of that series, Kelham looked to have recorded the final out, and the bench rushed the field, dogpiling on top of him. Then a replay review kept the game alive, and Kelham had to recompose himself to notch the final out, which he did.
Storyline to follow: Cinderella's Cinderella
Murray State is just the fourth 4-seed to ever reach the College World Series — the equivalent of a 12- or 13-seed making it to the Final Four in college basketball. This year was only the fourth time in program history that the Racers made it to regionals and the first since 2003. Head coach Dan Skirka is a rising star in the coaching world who leaned on the portal to add older, experienced players. The group has jelled magisterially well at just the right time. First, the Racers poached a regional from Ole Miss by topping the Rebels in a wild winner-take-all final. Then they stormed past Duke in Durham to complete an all-time improbable run to Omaha.
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Arkansas Razorbacks
First game: vs. LSU, 7 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN
Player to watch: LF Charles Davalan
A Montreal, Quebec, native who spent his freshman year at Florida Gulf Coast, Davalan took his talents to Fayetteville for his sophomore season and has been dynamite atop the Arkansas lineup. The Razorbacks are no strangers to the transfer portal, as just two of their regular starting lineup (catcher Ryder Helfrick and first baseman Reese Robinett) have been at Arkansas since they were freshman. But of all the high-level transfer talent on this roster, Davalan has perhaps been the most pleasant surprise. At 5-foot-9, he isn't the most physical presence in the Razorbacks lineup, but he's the most complete hitter, an on-base maven with more pop than you'd expect from someone his size. Davalan is a quintessential leadoff man who sets the tone for the Arkansas offense and is a blast to watch. He deserves to be a top-50 pick in next month's draft.
Storyline to follow: Can they finally get it done?
This is Arkansas's 12th appearance at the College World Series and eighth under head coach Dave Van Horn, who is in his 23rd year leading the Razorbacks. But Arkansas has never claimed the ultimate prize, making them one of the most successful Division I programs without a national title. What happened in 2018 — a dropped fly ball on what would've been the championship-clinching out against Oregon State — still looms large as a haunting what-if for this program. But in a season of parity across college baseball, this year's Arkansas squad looks to be the most complete on paper, giving them the highest ceiling of any team still standing and a tremendous opportunity to finally claim the school's first national title. The pressure will certainly be on — especially with a terrific LSU team as their first opponent — but the Hogs have the talent to get it done.
LSU Tigers
First game: vs. Arkansas, 7 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN
Player to watch: LHP Kade Anderson
Anderson, who turns 21 next month, entered this spring as a fringe first-round talent as a draft-eligible sophomore. The young southpaw was coming off a promising freshman season but had yet to prove himself as a reliable member of an SEC rotation. This spring, not only did Anderson establish himself as LSU's ace, but he also surged into the discussion as maybe the best pitcher in college baseball and is now a near-certain top-five pick next month. With plus command of four above-average pitches, Anderson has racked up a whopping 163 strikeouts across 103 innings, with a chance to add more in Omaha.
Storyline to follow: Can this new-look Tigers team win another title?
It was just two years ago that LSU claimed the sixth national championship in program history led by a generational duo of college baseball star power in Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews. That wasn't very long ago, but there's virtually no overlap between that title-winning roster and the one currently tasked with chasing down a national championship. From this year's team, only first baseman Jared Jones and outfielder Josh Pearson played significant roles on the 2023 team; nearly every other major contributor on the current roster arrived in the past two years, either as a top-end recruit or as a transfer. If head coach Jay Johnson can lead this new-look group to another title — his second in just his fourth season in Baton Rouge — his status as one of the great skippers of this generation of college baseball would only be amplified.