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Has Coastal Carolina won College World Series? Chanticleers aiming for another title

Has Coastal Carolina won College World Series? Chanticleers aiming for another title

USA Today21-06-2025
When the College World Series began just a week ago, Coastal Carolina was looked at by many to be the team that could blow up eight-team CWS bracket.
After 12 total games played at Charles Schwab Field Omaha, the Chanticleers have done just that.
Riding its nation-leading 26-game win streak, the third longest in Division I baseball in the last five years, Coastal Carolina has returned to the CWS championship series with wins in Omaha over Arizona, No. 8 Oregon State and Louisville (to say nothing of the Chanticleers' super regional sweep of No. 4 Auburn). Next up is No. 6 LSU in the finals, which get underway on June 21 at 7 p.m. ET.
REQUIRED READING: College World Series bracket: Scores, schedule, teams, times, TV channel for CWS
The Chanticleers' run in Omaha has been far from impressive and garnered praise from all around the college baseball world, including Louisville coach Dan McDonnell, who called Coastal Carolina an "efficient," "well-oiled machine" team after losing to the Chanticleers in the CWS semifinals.
Entering the best-of-three championship series, Coastal Carolina leads all teams at the CWS with 24 runs scored and the second-best pitching staff ERA at 3.00. The Chanticleers now look to add to their trophy case and end a five-year stretch of an SEC team winning it all in Omaha.
Here's what to know about the Chanticleers' history in the CWS championship:
Has Coastal Carolina baseball won a national championship?
Yes, Coastal Carolina baseball has won the College World Series once in program history, which came in its first trip to Omaha in 2016.
The Chanticleers' national championship was historic in several facets: It was the first national title in program history; the first NCAA national championship for the Big South (then Coastal Carolina's conference); and marked the first time since Minnesota in 1956 that a team making its College World Series debut won it all.
In that 2016 CWS championship series, Coastal Carolina reverse-swept Arizona, winning 2-1, to be the last team standing in Omaha.
"We're not the most talented team in America. We're just the national champion," former Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore said. "That's all that matters."
He added: "This program has been a lot better than people give it credit for. They thought we played in a small conference and couldn't get this done. This bunch wanted to prove everybody wrong."
REQUIRED READING: Coastal Carolina vs Arizona: Revisiting Chanticleers' 2016 CWS title win over Wildcats
Coastal Carolina College World Series history
Coastal Carolina has a miniscule history with the CWS championship — albeit a successful one.
Two wins vs. LSU would make Coastal Carolina just the fourth team since the best-of-three championship series was added to the CWS format in 2003 — joining South Carolina in 2011, Arizona in 2012 and UCLA in 2013 — to win the national championship with a perfect 10-0 postseason record.
Here's a breakdown of how the Chanticleers have fared in their trips to the CWS finals:
Coastal Carolina NCAA baseball tournament schedule
To make the College World Series, Coastal Carolina won the Conway Regional and Auburn Super Regional with a perfect 5-0 record. The Chanticleers won the Conway Regional with wins over No. 4 regional seed Fairfield (10-2) and No. 3 seed ECU, twice (18-7 and 1-0, respectively). They then beat No. 4 national seed Auburn 7-6 and 4-1, respectively.
The Chanticleers have not lost a beat in Omaha, going a perfect 3-0 in the winner's bracket of Bracket 1 play with wins over Arizona, No. 8 Oregon State and Louisville. In its 11-3 CWS semifinal win over Louisville, Coastal Carolina led from the jump, plating six runs in the bottom of the first inning.
For his part, Schnall there weren't any comparisons that came to mind between this team and the 2016 championship squad.
"I wish I could give you an answer that you could really take off with, but I can't, no. It's different than the 2016 team. That 2016 lineup was so dangerous, 1 through 9 — power, speed, short game," Schnall said following the Chanticleers' win over Louisville.
"This team is different. It's more grind, inside game, first to third, little things like that. And they play really high-level defense, even though we made two outfield errors this week. That's the only errors we made. We're fielding over .980 in the postseason which is pretty tough to do because you're in a lot of pressure situations"
Here's a game-by-game breakdown of how Coastal Carolina has advanced to the 2025 College World Series championship series:
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From a 70-7 loss to FBS: Why Missouri State jumped to college football's highest level
From a 70-7 loss to FBS: Why Missouri State jumped to college football's highest level

New York Times

time4 days ago

  • New York Times

From a 70-7 loss to FBS: Why Missouri State jumped to college football's highest level

Although the thought of moving up to the highest level of college football had long percolated at Missouri State, it didn't start to formalize until the run-up to a game at Arkansas State in 2015. The Sun Belt Conference had just invited Coastal Carolina from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), and member Arkansas State liked the idea of adding a peer only 200 miles away in Missouri's third-largest city (Springfield) to the conference too. There was enough mutual interest between Missouri State and the conference for preliminary talks. The matchup wasn't supposed to be a trial run for the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), exactly, but it quickly became a four-quarter feasibility study into the Bears' immediate potential in the highest subdivision. Advertisement They lost 70-7. 'We just got the hell beat out of us,' said Clif Smart, then Missouri State's president. 'It was a humiliating, awful game. We went home from that going, 'We're not anywhere close to being ready.'' They are now. Or at least they'd better be. Missouri State became a Conference USA member this summer, joining Delaware as the newest programs in the 136-team FBS. The Bears' FBS debut is at USC on Aug. 30. It's a big jump for any team, going from recent home openers like Lindenwood and Lincoln University of Missouri to No. 16 SMU. But it seems especially ambitious for a losing program (.483 all-time winning percentage) with only one (shared) conference title and six winning seasons this century. To make it happen, the Bears needed more than the usual administrative commitment and hush-hush politicking to grab what they thought could be one of the last FBS spots available. They needed one of college sports' biggest lightning rods to show proof-of-concept that a basketball school in a basketball region can, finally, win in football. They needed Bobby Petrino. The Bears' glory days came in a 15-year stretch, mostly away from the gridiron and under a different name, Southwest Missouri State. From 1987-99, only four current mid-majors made the NCAA Tournament in men's basketball more than the Bears (six appearances): New Mexico, Murray State, Princeton and UMass. They hung with Kansas and UNLV, knocked off Clemson and upset Wisconsin and Tennessee to make the Sweet 16 as a No. 12 seed in 1999. 'Everybody was going to basketball games,' said Ned Reynolds, a Springfield sports broadcaster for the last 58 years. 'Everybody.' Though the program has fallen to 221-226 over the past 14 seasons, basketball still resonates. The Bears opened a new arena in 2008, and a budget working group ranked hoops ahead of football in a 2017 document obtained by the Springfield News-Leader. Advertisement The women's program is even better. The Lady Bears have made 17 of the past 33 NCAA Tournaments, led the nation in attendance in 1993 and made the Final Four in 1992 and 2001. Jackie Stiles was Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark, becoming the first woman to score 1,000 points in a season and graduating as the NCAA's all-time leading scorer (3,393 points, which still ranks fifth). Football flashed with back-to-back FCS playoff appearances in 1989-90 … then lost 191 of its next 320 games. The 70-7 debacle at Arkansas State was the program's worst loss in 94 years and showed the FCS/FBS gap in facilities, talent, commitment and everything else. As losing seasons mounted, fans weren't the only ones questioning the program's existence. School officials considered cutting it. 'Forget about FBS,' said Kyle Moats, who was Missouri State's athletic director from 2009-24 before going to Eastern Kentucky. 'We had a serious thought as to, are we going to continue to keep going this route.' The doubts led to the next turning point in late 2019. As the Bears stumbled through a 1-10 season, Moats got a call from Petrino, who was a year removed from being fired at Louisville. Petrino had high-level success with the Cardinals (77-35 over two stints) and at Arkansas (21-5 over his final two seasons) but also had high-profile exits at both stops. He wanted back in the game, and the Bears wanted to give him a chance to answer the program's existential question. 'Could you win at football at Missouri State?' Smart asked. Turns out, you can. Petrino brought the Bears to the FCS playoffs for the first time in three decades with back-to-back appearances and a share of the Missouri Valley Football Conference title before returning to the FBS as an offensive coordinator. 'All of a sudden, we believed — we actually believed — we could move to FBS and compete,' Smart said. Advertisement Which led to the next question. Should the Bears move to FBS if given the chance? That answer was easier. Missouri State was one of the largest schools still in the FCS. The projected cost — about $10 million up front plus another $5 million annually — was significant but could be offset at least in part by larger conference distributions and bigger paychecks from Power 4 opponents. Administrators viewed a more prominent football program as a valuable marketing tool to help meet their goal of growing enrollment from 25,000 to 30,000 by 2030; the school could gain exposure through nationally televised weeknight contests and the EA Sports video game while adding an enhanced element to campus life. Going all-in on basketball was a non-starter. Because power conferences now monopolize at-large NCAA Tournament spots, the Bears would be trading one one-bid league (the Missouri Valley) for another. 'The way college athletics is and the way it's been going for the last decade, football is certainly the one that is driving pretty much everything,' said Patrick Ransdell, who succeeded Moats as athletic director last summer. The final pieces came together in the spring of 2024. The conference realignment chain reaction that started with the SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma was whittling Conference USA down to five members. The league needed to backfill, and Missouri State was a geographic and institutional fit. Because school administrators envisioned the industry's biggest brands wanting fewer, not more, FBS teams in the future, they feared the window to jump was closing. 'If we're gonna do this,' Smart said, 'we gotta do this now.' Last May, the Bears earned and accepted an invitation as Conference USA's 12th member. Ready or not, they had arrived. It's easy to see why prognosticators peg the Bears to finish in the bottom half of the league in Year 1. Since 2014, every FCS regular that moved up to FBS won at least 59 percent of its games in the five full seasons before the jump. Even with Petrino's bump, Missouri State is at .456 (excluding the 2020-21 COVID campaign). *Since 2014, excluding 2020-21 season and Charlotte, which played only two FCS seasons before moving up. But the numbers don't tell the full story. The Bears played in what Ransdell called the SEC of the FCS. North Dakota State and South Dakota State have won the past four national titles, South Dakota was a top-four seed last year and Illinois State and Youngstown State have both reached the FCS finals since 2014. The Bears' only defeats last season were to three playoff teams (Montana, South Dakota State and North Dakota State) and an eight-point road loss to an FBS school (Ball State). Advertisement Third-year coach Ryan Beard — Petrino's son-in-law — reeled off eight consecutive wins last season and returns record-breaking quarterback Jacob Clark, a former top-500 national recruit at Minnesota. 'We feel like we can step in and compete,' Ransdell said. Even if they can, the Bears still face other difficulties off the field. With no dedicated football facility yet, the team meets in the auditorium of a nearby academic hall. The 17,500-seat Robert W. Plaster Stadium needs more than the new turf, new lights and deep pressure-washing it recently received in Phase 0 of a three-phase update. Budgets have not yet been finalized, but Ransdell estimated future costs at $50 million. Those upgrades will be easier if Missouri State can accomplish a final challenge: making the community care. Since 1994, the Bears have cracked the top 20 in FCS home attendance only five times. Their average crowds (9,663 last year) are typically closer to McNeese and North Carolina Central than Delaware or the Dakota schools. 'My theory is, it wasn't that people didn't want football,' said Smart, the university's president emeritus after retiring last year. 'They didn't like losing football. They didn't like bad football.' There are early indications Smart's theory is correct. Season ticket revenue is up $200,000. Students voted to approve a $140 increase in their athletic fees to help fund the move. The fact that the Bears were able to keep Clark — one of FCS' top passers after setting school records in passing yards (3,604) and touchdowns (26) last year — in the transfer portal era wasn't lost on school president Richard 'Biff' Williams. 'There's a culture that did that, but of course I'm sure there's some donors and some NIL and some things that helped him stay,' Williams said. 'I think that tells you kind of where our community and coaches and others are.' Advertisement Where they are now is a long way from where they were a decade ago against Arkansas State. What started with a devastating 70-7 defeat led to a proof-of-concept flash from Petrino and, finally, a trip to the Coliseum to face USC and a visit from a reigning College Football Playoff team, SMU, as a fellow member of the sport's top division. Will the school, the team and the community finally be ready? 'The sense that I get is, this is the Show-Me State,' said Reynolds, the longtime local broadcaster. 'Show us.' Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle

Pennsylvania family celebrates rare baseball double — sons in College World Series, Little League World Series
Pennsylvania family celebrates rare baseball double — sons in College World Series, Little League World Series

CBS News

time12-08-2025

  • CBS News

Pennsylvania family celebrates rare baseball double — sons in College World Series, Little League World Series

It's been a dream summer of baseball for the Mihos family, who live in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, and one they say they'll never forget. In June, their middle son, Dean Mihos, played in the College World Series for Coastal Carolina. Now, just weeks later, their youngest son, Theo, is preparing to take the field in Williamsport for the Little League World Series, representing Glenmoore. "My husband put a baseball bat and a glove in their hands and said, 'Go play.' And this is where it's led us to," said Sabrina Mihos, the boys' mom. Back in June, Dean Mihos' run to Omaha with Coastal Carolina was a milestone moment for the family. "Alex and I and Theo, we made it there, and that was an incredible experience," said Ari Mihos, their father. But just when they thought the excitement had ended, the Mihos family was once again packing bags for another once-in-a-lifetime trip, this time to Williamsport. "I thought it was over back in June with the men's College World Series in Omaha," Sabrina Mihos said. "But here we are again, going to Williamsport." Theo, 11, plays second base and will suit up for Glenmoore in Thursday's opening game. "He's excited, but like any 11-year-old, he's also a little bit homesick," Ari Mihos said. "I was an average athlete. I think all my kids' athletic ability come from my wife, more than me, so I'll give her the credit for that." Theo isn't on this journey alone. His two older brothers have been both inspiration and support. "It's a testament to the work they put in. They fell in love with the game," Sabrina Mihos said. "I gave up a couple of journeys to the beach, holidays, because we have a batting cage in the back." Their oldest son, Alex Mihos, just graduated from Widener University, where he pitched for the baseball team. "Theo is becoming a great young man, and Dean is an exceptional leader," Alex Mihos said. "I tried hard," Alex Mihos said. "But watching them accomplish basically my dreams ... is just surreal. It's surreal for me, and I know it's surreal for my parents, too." While the Mihos family is certainly proud of their sons' baseball achievements, they say the lessons go far beyond the field. "We've all been on this journey together, and I'm just so proud of them," Sabrina Mihos said. No matter what happens on the field in Williamsport this week, the Mihos family says they've already won, together.

2025 Coastal Carolina Football Predictions: Chanticleers Ranked 94th in RJ Young's Ultimate 136
2025 Coastal Carolina Football Predictions: Chanticleers Ranked 94th in RJ Young's Ultimate 136

Fox Sports

time11-08-2025

  • Fox Sports

2025 Coastal Carolina Football Predictions: Chanticleers Ranked 94th in RJ Young's Ultimate 136

College Football 2025 Coastal Carolina Football Predictions: Chanticleers Ranked 94th in RJ Young's Ultimate 136 Published Aug. 10, 2025 9:29 p.m. ET share facebook x reddit link This isn't your average college football ranking. My Ultimate 136 is a set of rankings that is fluid, but it's my job to look ahead and make a claim for all FBS teams based on what I know and why I know it. Here are the three pressing questions I started by asking when putting together this list: Who do I think is good? Why do I think they're good? What are the chances they will finish above or below my expectations? Here is a look at where Coastal Carolina lands in my Ultimate 136. Coastal Carolina ranking: 94 Last year's ranking: 60 Top player: WR Jameson Tucker: Has totaled 1,002 receiving yards and 9 touchdown catches over the last two seasons. [Coastal Carolina's 2025 schedule] RJ's take: Tim Beck's Chanticleers yearn for consistency. Only four of his players started every game last season — and they still went bowling. With the entire starting backfield of quarterback Ethan Vasko and running back Braydon Bennett transferring out, Beck is looking to signal-callers MJ Morris (Maryland) and Emmett Brown (San Jose State) to plug and play alongside three returners at wideout in Bryson Graves, Jameson Tucker and Cameron Wright. On defense, the addition of SEC and ACC talent in the backfield in Ja'Marion Wayne (Missouri) and Robby Washington (Miami) should help keep the Chanticleers in position to defend the farm at Myrtle Beach. ADVERTISEMENT [ Check out RJ Young's Ultimate 136 College Football Rankings here ] Coastal Carolina Win Total Odds: Over 5.5 (+106) Under (-130) Have an issue with my rankings? Think your alma mater is too low, or your school's rival is too high? Get at me on X, @RJ_Young , and I'll select my favorite tweets and respond to them in a future article. RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him at @RJ_Young. FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports experience College Football Coastal Carolina Chanticleers share

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