College Baseball
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College baseball week in review: Oklahoma keeps rolling, Clemson sweeps South Carolina

Oklahoma is on the rise in its first season in the Southeastern Conference. The Sooners entered The Athletic college baseball Top 25 last week at No. 23 after they beat then-No. 9 Oregon State and then-No. 3 Virginia at the Round Rock Classic.

Oklahoma remained perfect with a weekend sweep over Cal State Northridge in Norman. The Sooners rallied for a 3-2 win on Sunday after they scored 39 runs in four games over the previous five days.

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Right-handed junior Kyson Witherspoon, the reigning SEC Pitcher of the Week, threw six shutout innings Friday against Northridge. Witherspoon has a 28-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 1.50 ERA in three starts, coming off an offseason in which he pitched for the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team.

Witherspoon gives the Sooners a high-end SEC ace. And his twin brother, Malachi, is a solid No. 2 for the Sooners, posting a 2-0 mark with a 1.88 ERA in three starts. He closed for Team USA last summer. The Witherspoon twins came to OU from Northwest Florida State College ahead of the 2024 season.

The Sooners’ No. 3 starter is Cameron Johnson, a top-15 national recruit in the Class of 2023 who spent his freshman season at LSU. His command continues to be an issue — he has walked 10 in 13.1 innings — but opposing hitters are batting only .204 against him in his three starts.

OU improved to 11-0, its best start since it won its first 16 games in 2011, with the three wins against Northridge. The Sooners visit Dallas Baptist on Tuesday, the most significant obstacle in the way of Oklahoma taking a 16-0 record into its SEC opener at South Carolina on March 14.

The Sooners advanced to the College World Series finals in 2022 but failed to get out of a Regional the last two seasons.

Clemson made a statement in handing rival South Carolina its first three losses of the season, sweeping the Gamecocks 5-3, 5-1 and 8-2. The opening game was played Friday at Clemson, Saturday in Greenville, S.C., and Sunday at Founders Park in Columbia, the Gamecocks’ home stadium.

Ethan Darden pitched seven scoreless innings on Saturday, allowing three hits, to win the Bob Bradley Award as Clemson’s MVP in the annual series. The Tigers are 10-1.

Columbia has enjoyed a rich recent history in baseball. The Lions have won the Ivy League postseason championship five times dating back to 2013.

They took Miami to a winner-take-all seventh game of a Regional in 2015 and won a pair of games at the Blacksburg Regional in 2022.

In Columbia’s not-so-recent history, Lou Gehrig played at the New York school.

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Over the weekend, Columbia played at Oregon, the preseason Big Ten favorite. The Ducks swept the four-game series, scoring 55 runs in the first two games. Oregon won 35-1 in the opener of a Saturday doubleheader.

Columbia does not need a pity party. The Lions will be fine. They play at Georgia this week.

But the lopsided scores in Eugene serve as a canary in the coal mine for college baseball.

What is to come of the Division I format, with more than 300 teams vying for the same postseason, as the 11.7-scholarship limit disappears in the wake of the NCAA v. House settlement?

If terms of the settlement are approved next month, the roster limit will drop in 2026 from 40 players to 34. But coaches will no longer be limited by the NCAA in how they distribute scholarship money.

Rich SEC schools and other power-conference programs that invest in baseball can soar past 11.7 scholarships if they choose to pay for it. Scholarship costs will be deducted from revenue revenue-sharing allotment, expected in 2025-26 to be capped at $20.5 million.

Columbia and its Ivy League partners do not award athletic scholarships. Safe to say the Lions also won’t see any part of revenue-share dollars. And while the vast majority of college baseball players will not get rich from the House settlement, its impact and the next wave of NIL payments are sure to tip the scales further in this sport.

In fact, it all may prove to be a death knell in the bids of under-resourced programs to compete with the likes of Oregon and Georgia.

Administrations on both sides of the power structure ought to think twice about scheduling such future series.

Columbia will continue to find and develop good players. Just not enough of them to stay on the field with an elite group of power programs on track to grow more powerful.

Gardner-Webb designated hitter Dale Francis smashed four home runs on Saturday in the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ 16-14 win at Appalachian State.

Francis, a fifth-year senior from Fort Pierce, Fla., drove in 12 runs. After he hit a grand slam in the seventh inning, Francis was denied a chance at his fifth home run when the Mountaineers intentionally walked him in the top of the ninth inning with one out.

He also homered in the first, fifth and sixth innings. Francis transferred after last season to Gardner-Webb from Division II Erskine College, where he hit .405 with 15 homers in 33 games last year. Through 13 games this season, he’s hitting .409 with seven homers, 27 RBIs and a 1.436 OPS.

Marshall McDougall of Florida State owns the NCAA record for home runs and RBIs in a game. McDougall hit six bombs and drove in 16 runs against Maryland in 1999.

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Gardner-Webb dropped to 6-7 after a 9-7 loss on Sunday to App State. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Francis, hitting in the cleanup spot, finished 1 for 3 with a single.

Gardner-Webb of the Big South has not appeared in the NCAA postseason since its move to Division I in 2003. For any host school that might draw G-W in a Regional — if the Bulldogs can find a way to win the conference tournament — there’s a big bat in the middle of that lineup to avoid.

Miami won the series finale, 13-7, against Florida on Sunday in Gainesville to hand the fourth-ranked Gators their first loss in 12 games this season.

To say their rivalry has been tightly contested through the years is an understatement.

Top-ranked Texas A&M, after a 5-0 start, lost four consecutive games but avoided a winless week with a 14-4 victory against Rice on Sunday night in the Astros Foundation College Classic. Also at Dalkin Park over the weekend in Houston, Oklahoma State beat the Aggies 4-0, and Arizona scored twice in the top of the ninth inning for a 3-2 over A&M.

Texas State beat Texas A&M 7-3 on Tuesday in College Station after the Aggies lost the finale of a three-game series against Cal Poly on Feb. 23.

Earlier in the Week, A&M learned that sophomore Gavin Grahovac, their All-America third baseman, will miss the rest of the 2025 season due to a shoulder injury.

Speaking of Arizona, Chip Hale’s team has rebounded nicely after a 0-3 start. The Wildcats, ranked No. 15 in the preseason, won seven consecutive games before losing 5-1 to Tennessee on Sunday in Houston.

Arizona beat Texas A&M on run-scoring infield singles by Easton Breyfogle and Brendan Summerhill in the decisive ninth inning on Friday. On Saturday, Arizona reliever Tony Pluta escaped a two-aboard, no-out jam in the bottom of the ninth as the Cats beat Mississippi State 6-5.

The unbeaten Volunteers were the class of the Astros Foundation College Classic. Defending national champion Tennessee (11-0) swept past Oklahoma State, Rice and Arizona. Four Tennessee relievers shut down Arizona in the de facto championship game of the event over the final seven innings.

Tennessee pitchers allowed five earned runs in three games and recorded 45 strikeouts while holding the opposition to a .204 batting average. Junior second baseman Gavin Killen hit .600 with four homers and seven RBIs in the tournament.

Kansas last played in a Regional in 2014. It’s off to a 10-1 start under third-year coach Dan Fitzgerald and opened its latest series in Lawrence with a bang. Dariel Osoria hit a walk-off grand slam on Thursday as the Jayhawks beat Omaha 12-8. The Mavericks took a two-run lead to the bottom of the ninth inning before Chase Diggins hit a game-tying, two-run shot.

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Omaha, which beat then-No. 4 LSU a week earlier on the road, rebounded Friday to win 9-5, but Kansas took three of four games in the series. The Jayhawks are off to their best 11-game start since that 2014 season when they won one game at the Louisville Regional.

KU finished 31-23 overall and 15-15 in the Big 12 last year and had six players selected in the MLB Draft.

Arkansas left-hander Parker Coil hurled an immaculate inning on Sunday in the Razorbacks’ 4-3 win against Charlotte. Coil threw nine pitches in the eighth inning, all for strikes, to fan the side.

Even more impressive, Portland’s Ryan Rembisz threw a perfect game — on just 90 pitches! — against Seattle on Tuesday in an 8-0 win for the Pilots. Rembisz, a senior lefty, struck out 12 to complete the 21st nine-inning perfecto in Division I history.

The game at Joe Etzel Field in Portland was attended by 165 people — all of them witnesses of history.

(Photo of Kyson Witherspoon: Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)

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