OMAHA, Neb. — Arizona lost its last game of the 2016 season to Coastal Carolina in the 2016 College World Series, coming up short for its fifth national title. The Wildcats begin another quest for a CWS championship Friday against the Chanticleers.
Arizona had another chance for a championship in 2021 but lost both of its games in Omaha. Coastal Carolina is in its first CWS since winning the title nine years ago.
The Wildcats (44-19) will play Coastal Carolina (53-11) at 11 a.m., Tucson time, on ESPN. The winner goes on to play Sunday at 4 p.m. against the team that emerges victorious between Louisville (40-22) and Oregon State (47-14-1). The Cardinals and Beavers play at 4 p.m. Friday.
The loser of the Arizona-Coastal Carolina game plays an elimination game Sunday at 11 a.m. against the Oregon State-Louisville loser.
Arizona coach Chip Hale is returning to Omaha for the first time since he won the 1986 championship with the Wildcats under legendary coach Jerry Kindall. Arizona has four titles. The team has rallied behind its “Chasing Five” motto during the postseason.
“The Wildcats and University of Arizona had a rich history here,” Hale said. “Coach Kindall obviously winning the three, Andy Lopez in 2012, and Jay (Johnson) bringing them back in ’16 and ’21.
“It’s a huge deal to be here. … It’s huge, and just to look back on it, I’ll wait until this is all over because we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Las Vegas has Coastal Carolina, which is on a 23-game winning streak, the favorite against Arizona on Friday, with a run differential of 1.5.
Coastal Carolina is starting right-hander Riley Eikhoff (6-2, 2.90 ERA) against Arizona right-hander Owen Kramkowski (9-6, 5.48).
Kevin Schnall, the Chanticleers’ first-year coach, is reportedly saving ace right-hander Jacob Morrison (11-0, 2.15) for Sunday. He has another quality starter in right-hander Cameron Flukey (7-1, 3.24).
Arizona’s pitching has been opportunistic, much like its lineup, in the postseason.
The Wildcats rank 49th in the nation with a 4.82 ERA, while Coastal Carolina’s staff is No. 2 at 3.21 ERA, second best of anyone.
Kramkowski evolved into Arizona’s Friday-night starter despite having limited opportunities since his junior year at Walden Grove High School. He was out most of his senior season because of elbow surgery and pitched only 1 1/3 innings last season.
Rio Rico right-handed graduate Raul Garayzar (2-0, 2.81) is slated to start Sunday, and freshman right-hander Smith Bailey (3-3, 4.01) will start the Wildcats’ third game here if they go that far.
Arizona’s bullpen is the backbone of the team.
Tony Pluta, a right-handed closer, was named an NCBWA and ABCA/Rawlings All-American this week
He was announced as the 2025 NCBWA Stopper of the Year on Friday morning.
The award, in its 20th season, is given annually to the nation’s top relief pitcher. Pluta’s recognition marks the first time an Arizona pitcher has been selected as the Stopper of the Year and the first-ever NCBWA major award win for a Wildcat.
Pluta has a program-record 14 saves this season with a team-best 1.26 ERA. He secured saves in Arizona’s clinching victories in the Big 12 tournament and Super Regional at North Carolina. He also notched the win in Game 2 of that series, pitching in the last three innings and while throwing 52 pitches.
Mason White, a Salpointe graduate, is second in program history with 48 home runs, trailing only former Canyon del Oro standout Shelly Duncan’s total of 55.
He also has 110 career extra-base hits, tied for the most in program history. He passed his current head coach, Chip Hale, with two extra-base hits on May 22 against BYU in the Big 12 tournament.
Coastal Carolina has catcher Caden Bodine (.332, .466 OBP) — a finalist for the Buster Posey Award and a Perfect Game All-American Second-Team selection.
First baseman Colby Thorndyke (.307, 40 RBIs) and left fielder Sebastian Alexander (.320, 10 home runs, 27 stolen bases) lead a lineup that has slugged 66 home runs and tallied 433 RBIs.
“They’re really good,” Hale said of Coastal Carolina. “I’ve watched a lot of video of their pitching and kind of the way they play, their style of play, and they do a lot of things really well. And they’re gritty like us, obviously a mid-major. They won a bunch of games in a row.
“Bottom line with the team, what we tell them is just keep playing good baseball. Doesn’t matter if you’re playing the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers or Salpointe High School, if you don’t play good baseball and catch the ball and throw it to first and get your bunts down and run the bases correctly, then you’re going to lose to those teams. And you can beat them if you do those things well.
Arizona catcher Adonys Guzman was also selected as one of 13 semifinalists for the Buster Posey Award. Through 60 games, Guzman has posted a .318 batting average (71-for-223) with 40 runs scored, 11 doubles, eight home runs, and 42 RBIs, all of which are career-high marks.
Four Wildcats enter Friday’s game with on-base streaks of five games or longer: Garen Caulfield (six games), Easton Breyfogle (six games), outfielder Brendan Summerhill (five games) and Guzman (five games). Summerhill and fellow outfielder Aaron Walton have both posted 25-game on-base streaks this year, tied for the longest on the team.
Arizona has won 11 of its last 13 games, 10 of them on the road in the previous four weeks.
Before this run, the Wildcats lost two games at home against Utah, the Big 12’s last-place team, and they were routed by a .500 Houston team 13-4 in the first game of a three-game series on the road.
“We had that little lull in the Utah series and the beginning of the Houston series,” Pluta said. “I think that was a gut check and a reality check, and we all just got right back on track. And that kind of just pushed us to where we are now.”
White said Arizona responded after they “started getting punched in the face.”
“People may have started panicking or maybe feeling like, ‘Oh, no, this might not go the way we want it to go,'” he said. “We had a real come-to just what’s going to happen, what are we going to do about it? We got to work and we knew we needed to play game by game and keep winning.
“That’s winning each pitch. That’s what this team adopted and we’re still going by that.”
The only loss for Hale’s in the postseason (the Big 12 tournament, Eugene (Ore.) Regional and Chapel Hill (N.C.) Super Regional) was an 18-2 defeat against North Carolina last week. Arizona recovered to win the final two games of the best-of-three series by scores of 10-8 and 4-3.
Coastal Carolina continued its longest active winning streak in the nation by eliminating host Auburn in the Super Regional last weekend. The Chanticleers won by scores of 7-6 and 4-1.
The Chanticleers have the third-best odds to win the CWS at +600, following Arkansas (+200) and LSU (+225).
Arizona (+1400) is at sixth among the eight teams in the field.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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