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Five Reasons Texas Baseball Will Win the Austin Regional

by: Evan Vieth05/28/26

Texas enters the Austin Regional as one of the clearest regional favorites in the nation. Draft Kings has only No. 1 seed UCLA ahead, and most sites have them as one of the three favorites to make and win the College World Series.

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That seems..aggressive. The Longhorns are a very strong team, it’s hard to find a power rating system that doesn’t see them as a top-eight team, but anyone whose really paid attention to college baseball this year knows the two Georgia schools and UCLA have shown far more tendencies and traits that CWS champions possess, not to mention red-hot programs like Auburn and Florida, who can outduel anyone on the rubber.

Still, the average observer sees Texas as a clear favorite in the Austin Regional that features UC Santa Barbara, Tarleton St. and Holy Cross. Here are five reasons why:

1. The best Texas arms may be the best in the nation

Here’s a tweet for you:

Texas’ three starters – Dylan Volantis, Luke Harrison and Ruger Riojas – and trio of relievers Sam Cozart, Brett Crossland and Haiden Leffew average a game of around 3-4 earned runs, hits in 1/5 ABs, four strikeouts per walk and a 1.08 WHIP.

I think a lot of Texas fans have forgotten just how dominant this group can be because Riojas hasn’t been used much in the last month, and we haven’t seen many games where three or more have pitched.

Texas has played four of the 15 other regional hosts this season, and has won six of those games, three series total, with four of those wins, and a loss, featuring fewer than three earned runs:

Sunday vs Auburn: 0 ER in 8 1/3 from Volantis, Cozart and Crossland
Friday vs MS State: 1 ER in 8 IP from Volantis, Leffew and Cozart
Alabama series: 5 ER in 25 IP from Volantis, Riojas, Harrison, Cozart, Leffew and Crossland

Those five games saw these six pitchers throw all but 3 2/3 possible innings at a 1.31 ERA.

Of course, they aren’t perfect, as shown by the A&M and Tennessee series, but few teams enter the postseason with a trio of starters and relievers this strong.

This would be a perfect three games for Texas.

2. Health at the right time

Following the Tennessee series, it was easier to count the number of players who weren’t healthy than the ones who were.

Here’s a running laundry list of players who have dealt with problems in the last month, not even counting Max Grubbs and Jonah Williams, who are out for the year: Aiden Robbins, Carson Tinney, Anthony Pack, Adrian Rodriguez, Ethan Mendoza, Dariyan Pendergrass, Ruger Riojas, and Brody Walls.

The positive, though, is that the rest that Texas head coach Jim Schlossnagle allowed his team to have after Knoxville has seemingly paid off.

Riojas, the star pitcher who has dealt with tendinitis in the back half of the year, looked ‘outstanding’ according to Schlossnagle this week.

“I anticipate him being at full strength.”

Robbins and Pendergrass are healthy, and though Mendoza won’t be able to field, he says his shoulder is good to go to swing.

You always hold your breath with someone like Rodriguez, but Texas seems to be as full strength as physically possible heading into this series.

3. A balanced offense

Texas isn’t the best offense in the country. They rank in the 30s in runs and in the 20s in most rate stats like OPS and average. Good, but not Yellow Jacket or Bulldog good.

But they are able to win in a few different ways.

Firstly, they possess starpower and pop.

Two players in particular, Aiden Robbins and Carson Tinney, have both. Tinney and Robbins rank top-eight in both OPS and SLG, proving they can do it both by getting on and by getting it out.

Anthony Pack Jr. is an elite hitter in his own right, leading the league in average and on-base, while Casey Borba is one of just 11 hitters with double-digit homers. All of these stats are from SEC play.

Texas has won games off of this starpower before: Auburn is a great example of that.

But they also have the ability to win by just moving the line, and most importantly, stealing bases.

The four mentioned above went 4/16 in the final MS State game, with Tinney in the middle of a semi-slump on 0 hits. But the Longhorns stole six bases, and middle of the order bats Mendoza, Becerra and Rodriguez combined for six RBI. The Longhorns scored 11 runs against one of the best in the SEC.

Texas’ offense has had frustrating points in this season: the SEC Tournament, Game 1 vs Tennessee, Game 2 vs Vanderbilt, Game 3 vs Alabama and even a Thursday night against South Carolina.

But from a game-to-game basis, even against good pitching, Texas always has something up its sleeve. Robbins, Pack and Tinney are the three best hitters in this regional. Borba would be the best power bat on the three other teams. No lineup has the 1-7 of Texas, and if Larson and Pendergrass are providing surplus value, good luck.

4. The Draw

I’ve been someone who has defended Texas’ regional draw in terms of difficulty. The betting markets and a lot of national pundits think that Texas got the easy way out.

While I do think the 2 and 3 seeds, UCSB and Tarleton St., have a few factors that plague Texas specifically, I can understand numbers.

PEAR Ratings has a TSR stat that power rates every team. Georgia Tech is 1st, UCLA 2nd, Georgia 3rd… and Texas is seventh. I actually think the top of that metric is fairly spot on.

UCSB is only 35th, basically denoting them as a three-seed level of strength. Tarleton is 96th, and Holy Cross is way down at 230th.

UCSB is still ahead of a number of two seeds, including Coastal Carolina, which No. 10 seed FSU was paired with, and though Holy Cross is one of the worst teams in the tournament, this isn’t some pushover group.

Still, it is clearly very manageable. UCSB does not have the bats of a regular two-seed; in fact, they have the worst offense of that grouping. Even with elite pitching, that’s an obvious flaw.

Tarleton St. is still, well, Tarleton St., even if they beat Texas in a midweek game earlier this year.

You’d be foolish to ignore that the Longhorns got it better than a team like UNC, which has to host Tennessee and East Carolina, or A&M, which gets USC, Texas State and Lamar. Hell, No. 2 Georgia Tech is going to have to beat a good Oklahoma team twice. That’s a team that can pitch.

Again, I don’t think this is some pushover trio of teams to face, and I definitely wouldn’t put Texas’ chances at 84% to win the regional like a betting site I saw, but the formula for Texas to go a quick 3-0 and exit this tournament without much flourish is much easier to find than with certain other programs.

No. 5: The Disch

Let’s put it simply, Texas is 29-4 at home.

Two-thirds of their losses in the regular season came on the road.

To add more context, Texas has never lost two games in a row, or even two games in a three-game span, at home.

They dropped Friday to Auburn, but rallied back to win the series.

The Tarleton home loss came directly after, but the next time they returned to the Disch they swept the Sooners.

Texas dropped the Sunday game to Alabama, but won their next midweek, and took 2/3 from Mississippi State with a Saturday loss.

Sweeping Oklahoma and taking down Ole Miss are also pretty nice results.

You just don’t beat Texas at the Disch multiple times.

Similar things happened last year, with Texas dropping just one series in Austin, the second-to-last of the year, to Florida.

We don’t talk about what happened in the postseason…

But either way, this year’s team is a very reliable choice at home, and that’s only amplified with the expectation of a rowdier home crowd for postseason play.

Maybe the party plaza is the magic this year’s team needs to escape a home regional for the first time since 2022, when they swept through Paul Skenes’ Air Force on the way to a CWS appearance.

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