College Baseball

College baseball week in review: Aces emerging at Florida, Wake Forest

It’s a year later than some may have expected, but Liam Peterson is dominating for the Florida Gators. One of the top pitching prospects to get through the 2023 MLB Draft, Peterson earned a role as a weekend starter for the Gators in 2024 as a freshman.

It didn’t go great.

In 18 appearances (16 starts), the Florida native went 3-6 with a 6.43 ERA and a 1.714 WHIP. The stuff was there — he struck out 77 in 63 innings and had some big moments against top competition — but too often he struggled with his command.

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It’s still early, but it appears things are coming together for Peterson in 2025. Over 10 innings in two starts (vs. Air Force and Dayton), he has allowed four hits and no earned runs while striking out 16 and walking three.

On Friday night, Peterson and the Gators welcome Miami to Gainesville.

Around the horn

Wake Forest has apparently found its next ace. Logan Lunceford, a transfer from Missouri, has been brilliant through two starts for the Demon Deacons. In a combined 9.1 innings in wins over Long Island and St. John’s, the 5-10 right-hander has allowed two hits, no runs and four walks while striking out 20.

Lunceford was a mainstay in the rotation in his two seasons at Missouri but went 5-10 with a 6.51 ERA and 1.53 WHIP in 114.2 innings. He appears to be making the jump from an innings eater to an all-conference candidate.

Lunceford is one of two SEC transfers in Wake’s weekend rotation. Sophomore Matthew Dallas, who pitched 17 innings on Tennessee’s 2024 national championship team, has settled in as the Saturday starter for Tom Walter’s team.

Is there cause for concern with the Texas A&M offense? The Aggies managed just two runs in a 3-2 loss at home to Cal Poly on Sunday and have scored six runs or fewer in four of six games this season — all at home against teams that are a combined 4-10 (and just 3-5 when not playing A&M).

The Aggies are slashing .266/.396/.462 as a team and have only 18 extra-base hits. All-America outfielder Jace LaViolette has three home runs but is hitting only .211. Fellow All-American Gavin Grahovac, a sophomore third baseman, is hitting .227.

It’s early, but these are still surprising numbers from an offense that is expected to be among the best in the nation.

There are no offensive issues at Tennessee.

The schedule has been far from taxing, but the Vols’ numbers through seven games are absurd. They are averaging 14 runs per game and are outscoring their opponents 98-11. They have hit 20 home runs and are slugging .718 as a team. Oh, and they rarely play nine innings; five of the seven games have ended after seven innings — only six plate appearances for the home team — with the Vols up at least 10 runs.

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The pitching staff has allowed only 23 hits in 53 innings and has 87 strikeouts and only 15 walks.

Tennessee hosts North Alabama on Tuesday before heading to Houston to play Oklahoma State, Rice and Arizona.

Is UCLA back?

The Bruins, who missed the NCAA Tournament the past two years and plummeted to a shocking 9-21 record in the final season of the Pac-12, are 6-1 after winning two of three at the Kleberg Bank College Classic in Corpus Christi, Texas, over the weekend.

UCLA opened the season with an emphatic sweep of Cal Poly — the same Cal Poly team that beat Texas A&M on Sunday — and also has wins over BYU, Washington State and Michigan State. The lone loss was on Friday night to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

No team had a better bounce back in the second weekend than Kansas State. The Wildcats opened the season by losing three of four at Baseball at the Beach in Conway, S.C., and then lost a midweek game at North Carolina. No reason to panic so early in the season, but K-State clearly needed to win some games to feel better about itself.

Mission accomplished.

The Cats went 3-0 at the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series in Arlington, Texas, picking up wins over two ranked teams — No. 3 Arkansas and No 20 TCU — plus a very good Michigan team that beat Virginia in the season-opener.

The story for K-State was its bullpen, which allowed only four hits and one earned run in 10.2 combined innings in the three games.

Through the first two weeks of the season, Rhode Island has been a part of (unofficially) the worst-pitched game in 2025 and (unofficially) the best-pitched game of 2025.

  • Last Sunday, the Rams beat William & Mary 36-22 in a game that featured 443 pitches, 58 runs, 40 hits and 29 walks in only seven innings.
  • Less than a week later, Rhode Island lost a 1-0 heartbreaker at Oregon that was decided on an unearned run in the bottom of the 11th inning. URI starter Trystan Levesque, a fifth-year senior, pitched 10 shutout innings, allowing only three hits while striking out nine. This game, in almost four more full innings, included 286 pitches, one run, nine hits and 11 walks.

Same sport. Different weekend. Wildly different results.

Two of the 10 coaches in our preseason forum singled out Penn State as a possible surprise team in 2025. So far so good for the Nittany Lions, who improved to 5-1 with a 15-7 win over Longwood on Sunday afternoon. Penn State, in Year 2 under Mike Gambino, opened the season in Puerto Rico (beating Missouri and UConn while losing to Stetson) before completing a three-game sweep — by a combined score of 36-8 — at Longwood.

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A big key has been the play of junior outfielder Paxton Kling, a former top-25 national recruit who played two seasons at LSU before transferring back to his native Pennsylvania. Kling played in 118 games in two seasons with the Tigers (including 22 starts on the 2023 national title team) but failed to carve out a consistent role

In six games at Penn State, he is hitting .440 with five home runs (he hit five in two seasons at LSU) and nine RBIs.

It was a rough week for NC State. The Pack lost a midweek home game to Liberty and then dropped three straight — to Ohio State, Alabama and Coastal Carolina — at the Jax College Baseball Classic in Jacksonville, Fla.

Jacob Dudan, a preseason All-America relief pitcher, has struggled in all three of his appearances this season. In 2.1 innings, he has given up four hits and seven runs (three earned) and has walked six and struck out only one.

Omaha pulled off the biggest upset of the 2025 season to date, a 5-4 stunner over LSU in Baton Rouge in the first game of a doubleheader on Saturday.

The game was not lacking in drama.

LSU didn’t get its first hit until outfielder Ashton Larson singled to right-center with two outs in the eighth. Then, in the ninth, the Tigers scored four runs and had runners on first and third with one out, trailing by only one run. But Matt Dreher struck out Larson and got shortstop Steven Milam to fly out to center to end the game.

LSU won Game 2 of the doubleheader 12-1 to take the series.

And finally

• UMES snapped a 55-game losing streak — dating back to May 20, 2023 — with a 14-7 win over Towson in Hagerstown, Md., on Saturday. The Hawks went 0-48 in 2024, becoming college baseball’s first winless team since St. Peter’s went 0-38 in 2017.

• FAU allowed a total of 10 runs en route to its 5-0 start. Then, on Saturday, the Owls gave up 17 runs — and still won, clinching a series against UConn with a 25-17 victory in Boca Raton. The Huskies won Game 3 on Sunday, 5-3.

• Maryland set school records in both runs (35) and hits (28) in a 35-12 win over Western Carolina on Saturday. The Terps, however, lost the series, dropping games to the Catamounts on Friday and Sunday.

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• Alabama rallied from a 10-0 deficit in the fourth inning on Sunday to beat Ohio State 12-10 on a walk-off three-run home run from first baseman Will Hodo. The Crimson Tide also beat Coastal Carolina on Friday and NC State on Saturday to go 3-0 at the Jax Baseball Classic. Alabama is 8-0 under second-year coach Rob Vaughn.

• Vanderbilt junior Cody Bowker threw five no-hit innings in the Commodores’ 10-0 win over Saint Mary’s on Sunday. In two starts, the transfer from Georgetown has allowed two hits and no earned runs in nine innings. Vanderbilt swept Saint Mary’s and is 7-1.

• Texas Tech is 1-5 after getting swept to open the season at North Carolina and losing two of three at home to UC Irvine.

(Photo of Liam Peterson: Steven Branscombe / Imagn Images)

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