After winning a mesmerizing pitching duel in Saturday night’s College World Series opener, LSU took advantage of Coastal Carolina’s sloppy start and won, 5-3, on Sunday, June 22 to capture the eighth national championship in program history.
The two-game sweep solidifies the Tigers’ place among the very upper crust of college baseball. Only one program has won more: Southern California has won an even dozen, though none since 1998.
For Coastal Carolina, it’s a heartbreaking and disappointing end to what had been a dream run to the doorstep of the Chanticleers’ second championship, following the 2016 team that came out of relative anonymity and defeated Arizona in the finals.
Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall and first-base coach Matt Schilling were ejected in the first inning of Sunday’s clincher for “continued arguing about balls and strikes,” the NCAA said in a statement.
Given where they started the year, though, and the lower expectations after an offseason coaching change, the appearance in Omaha opposite LSU establishes Coastal as maybe the best program outside the non-major conferences.
Looking back at the entire tournament, here are the winners and losers from this year’s CWS:
WINNERS
LSU
Talent eventually won out. That was apparent on Saturday night, when LSU sophomore Kade Anderson put together the first complete-game shutout in the CWS finals since 2018 and just the third since the championship series was added into the tournament format in 2003. What the Tigers had was room for error — and more than enough athleticism and MLB-level ability to take advantage of any opportunity provided by the Chanticleers’ missteps. Handed that opportunity on Sunday afternoon, LSU plated a run in the third and four in the fourth on a pair of two-run singles.
Coastal Carolina
The Chanticleers will always have that 23-game winning streak heading into Omaha, Nebraska, which passed the previous record heading into the College World Series set by Oregon State in 2017. They added three more to push that run to 26 games before meeting LSU. That the magic ran out in the best-of-three finals is the biggest source of disappoint from Coastal, which felt like a team of destiny in overcoming several big-name programs in the regional and super regional rounds before breezing through the double-elimination section of the World Series.
The SEC
LSU gives the SEC five national championships in a row: Vanderbilt in 2019, Mississippi State in 2021, Mississippi in 2022, the Tigers in 2023 and Tennessee last season. It hadn’t been a picture-perfect tournament for the conference, which placed a record-setting 13 teams in the tournament but had just four reach the super regionals. The Tigers’ win this weekend erases the league’s inept run through the first two weekends and cements the SEC as the top baseball conference in the country.
Murray State
The Racers were the feel-good story of the tournament after making the program’s CWS debut. Beyond a distinct lack of national success, Murray State simply wasn’t expected to reach that stage even after booking a spot in the 64-team field: Underdogs in the Oxford regional against Mississippi, the Racers beat the Rebels to reach the program’s first super regional and then rallied out of another hole with a pair of wins against Duke to become just the fourth regional No. 4 seed to reach Omaha.
Gage Wood
While Arkansas was unable to mount a winning streak and reach the finals, Wood had the tournament’s defining moment with his epic 19-strikeout no-hitter against the Racers. The no-no was the first in Omaha since 1960 and his strikeout total set a new record for a nine-inning game. Before that performance, Wood had gone more than five innings in a start just once all season with just one start with double-digit strikeouts.
LOSERS
Arkansas
The long dry run continues for the Razorbacks. Arkansas has now made 12 CWS appearances with two trips to the finals, tying North Carolina and Clemson for the second-most trips to Omaha without a national championship. This most recent exit stands among the most painful in program history, bested by the 2018 loss to Oregon State defined by a misplayed fly ball in foul ground. After scoring two runs in the top of the ninth to take a 5-3 lead in a must-win game against LSU on Wednesday, June 18, the Razorbacks allowed a two-run double that tied the score and then a walk-off single to loss 6-5.
North Carolina
The Tar Heels suffered maybe the most brutal loss of the super regionals in giving away the elimination game against Arizona. Ahead 3-1 heading into the eighth inning thanks to a three-run homer from senior Jackson Van De Brake, UNC coughed away the lead with a pair of errors on the infield. The first, on a grounder booted by Van De Brake, cost the Tar Heels a possible double play. After a pitching change, UNC committed a throwing error on the Wildcats’ bunt attempt to move runners over, allowing a run to score. Another pitching change resulted in a two-run single that gave Arizona the lead and eventually the World Series berth.
Kevin Schnall
The former Coastal assistant pushed all the right buttons in piloting the Chanticleers to a record-setting win streak and to the doorstep of another national championship. But his ejection on Sunday threatens to overwrite his deft touch in reaching that point. Was he trying to motivate his team and raise the Chanticleers’ energy after a tough-to-swallow defeat in the opener? While that might have been his intent, Coastal continued to play listlessly the rest of the way, especially at the plate.
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