By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
Based on seedings in the NCAA baseball tournament a few weeks ago, the Texas A&M Aggies will still need to win a few more games in order to live up to expectations as one of the best teams in the nation.
The third-seeded Aggies didn’t dominate every game they played last weekend in the regional round, but they did win three in a row in their home stadium to advance, just as everyone expected.
Their hitting may not have been as prodigious as they would have liked, but then again, they did enough things well on Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park to take down Grambling (La.), arch-rival Texas and Louisiana.
Once again, A&M will be favored heavily this weekend. The Aggies host the Oregon Ducks in the best-of-three Bryan-College Station Super Regional, hoping to utilize a home-field advantage to earn a berth in the College World Series.
In the Ducks, the Aggies will face a program that has overachieved in the postseason in each of the past two seasons.
Oregon came into the postseason with a modest RPI of 52nd in the nation. The Ducks went on to post a 3-0 record at the Santa Barbara Regional, marking the second-straight season that the program has advanced with a road sweep on the first weekend.
Entering play as the region’s third seed, they won 5-4 in 11 innings against San Diego, with Bryce Boettcher slamming a solo home run in the top of the 11th, followed by Ducks’ reliever Logan Mercado working the bottom half to secure the victory.
Oregon, feeling the momentum, rode pitching and defense to two more victories by narrow margins, clinching the regional. They posted back-to-back wins over host UC Santa Barbara, topping the region’s top-seeded Gauchos, 2-1 and 3-0.
Last year, Oregon won three straight in Nashville, beating Xavier, national No. 3 Vanderbilt and Xavier again to reach the Super Regional round. On the next weekend, matched against Oral Roberts and playing at home, the Ducks struck out.
They won the opener but lost the next two, falling short of a CWS trip.
Records
Oregon 40-19
Texas A&M 47-13
Probable starters
Oregon’s RJ Gordon (7-5, 4.73) vs. Texas A&M’s Ryan Prager (8-1, 2.53).
Schedule
Saturday: Oregon at Texas A&M, 1 p.m.
Sunday: Oregon at Texas A&M, 6:30 p.m.
Monday: (if necessary, time TBA)
Players to watch
For A&M, Stanford transfer Braden Montgomery was six for 15 with five RBI in three games at the NCAA Bryan-College Station Regional, including a home run in the series-clinching win against Louisiana. Montgomery, considered one of the top prospects in the upcoming 2024 MLB draft, leads the Aggies with a .322 batting average, a .733 slugging percentage and a 1.185 OPS. He ranks second on the team in home runs with 27 and leads in RBI with 85.
For Oregon, starting pitchers RJ Gordon, Grayson Grinsell and Kevin Seitter had back-to-back-to-back dominant performances at the Santa Barbara Regional. The three combined to go 2-0 with a 1.17 ERA while allowing just three runs on 13 hits. They struck out 19 and walked nine in 23 innings. In the opener, Gordon allowed three runs on six hits in 7.0 innings while leaving the game with a 4-1 lead
Notable
Texas A&M’s coach is Jim Schlossnagle. In his third year in College Station, he is 129-60 with the Aggies. Schlossnagle has led A&M into the NCAA tournament three straight years, including twice to the Super Regionals.
In 2022, the Aggies won a Super Regional at home, sweeping two games from Louisville. At the College World Series, they lost the opener but bounced back to win twice before bowing out with a 2-2 record.
Schlossnagle previously worked as a head coach at UNLV for two seasons and at TCU for the next 18. He took the Rebels to one NCAA tournament and the Horned Frogs to 15. With the Frogs, Schlossnagle led seven teams to the Super Regionals and five to the College World Series.
In both 2015 and 2016, Schlossnagle’s Horned Frogs eliminated the Aggies in the Super Regional round, the first time in Fort Worth and the next one in College Station.
Oregon’s coach is Mark Wasikowski. In his sixth year in Eugene, he is 165-89 with the Ducks. Wasikowski, tasked with matching the prowess of in-state rival Oregon State, has led Oregon into the NCAA playoffs four straight years.
Quotable
Braden Montgomery, on the difference between baseball in the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference:
“The biggest difference I see is the depth in the teams that we’ve played against. I feel like … some of the pitching staffs or some of the teams we’d see last year in the Pac 12, there’s just a bigger difference from the top and the bottom (in the standings).
Whereas, like they say, in the SEC it’s a gauntlet, where every team truly has the chance to beat any other team. Not to say that it’s not like that in the Pac 12, but it’s … (it has) different layers to it, I guess.”