The 2025 College World Series field is set. Eight teams are on their way to Omaha, Nebraska to compete for the national championship, and the bracket includes a multitude of surprises after the regional and super regional rounds reshaped the sport’s power dynamics. 

Murray State is the biggest shocker of them all as it defeated Duke to punch its ticket to the CWS for the first time in program history, but the Racers — at +3500 to win the title per FanDuel Sportsbook — are not alone in generating storylines that will define the race to college baseball glory.

Winners of the last five national titles, the SEC boasts more CWS participants than any other conference. But the margin by which the sport’s premier league stands atop the rest is much slimmer than most would have anticipated heading into the tournament. With just two teams remaining, the SEC saw 11 of its record 13 postseason squads fall out of contention over the last two weekends. In turn, six conferences are represented in the bracket, and Oregon State stands alone as an independent.

Parity across conference lines is a step away from the trends that defined the last handful of tournaments when the SEC and ACC separated themselves from the pack. Still, the former features the perceived frontrunner as Arkansas embarks on a potential run to its first national title.

With the College World Series set to begin Friday, here are five key storylines that define the 2025 tournament.

Murray State’s Cinderella run continues

Murray State plays its home games at an 800-seat stadium that until 2014 did not even have grandstand seating. Coach Dan Skirka does the groundskeeping. Reagan Field did not even have a padded outfield wall until less than a decade ago. Yet here are the Racers, as few as five wins from a national championship. The program is the most improbable story in college baseball this postseason, and it is not particularly close.

Jonathan Hogart smashed a pair of home runs in the decisive game of the Durham Super Regional to spearhead the Racers’ 5-4 victory, which sent them to Omaha. He stands in a tie for first place in program history with 22 round-trippers on the year, and the outfielder was instrumental in the entirety of this miraculous tournament run with hits in every postseason game and at least two knocks in every contest but one. He has six homers in tournament play.

With that triumph over Duke, Murray State became just the fourth regional No. 4 seed to punch a ticket to the CWS since the tournament expanded in 1999. The Racers joined Oral Roberts (2023), Stony Brook (2012) and Fresno State (2008) in that rare company. Oral Roberts went 1-2 in Omaha, Stony Brook lost both of its contests and Fresno State stands alone as the only No. 4 seed to win the national championship.

Six conferences represented, plus an independent

Last year’s CWS was the most consolidated across conference lines in NCAA Tournament history; the SEC and ACC were the lone representatives with four teams apiece. Just one season after those leagues tied the record for the most participants from a single conference, the 2025 field could not be much more different. The SEC still leads the way with its two squads (Arkansas and LSU), but six other conferences have a flag-bearer in Omaha and Oregon State made its way back as an independent.

If not for last offseason’s landscape-altering wave of realignment, though, the Pac-12 would be front and center. Arizona represents the Big 12, UCLA hails from the Big Ten and Oregon State, as mentioned, is the lone program to operate this year as an independent. Those perennial West Coast powers long dominated the Pac-12, but the conference did not sponsor baseball this season with just two members under its umbrella.

“There’s so many good coaches and good players on the West,” UCLA coach John Savage said after the Bruins swept the Los Angeles Super Regional. “We beat each other up. This is for the West.”

No repeat participants

For the first time since 1957, none of the eight teams in the CWS are returners from the previous year. It is not as though the participants are no-names, though. LSU and Oregon State are the definitions of blue-bloods as the only programs with three national titles this century, and each of Coastal Carolina, Arizona and UCLA climbed to the mountaintop since 2012.

What the fresh faces represent, though, is that college baseball still has a sizable upper class that goes well beyond the SEC and ACC, despite recent seasons indicating that those conferences are a cut above the rest. Other sports saw a flattening at the top as the transfer portal and NIL eras progressed, and this could be a sign that the same is underway in baseball.

Lone top-five seed Arkansas enters as betting favorite

Regionals and super regionals were unkind to national seeds, but Arkansas was immune to the upset epidemic that sent each of the other top five seeds packing. That the Razorbacks, the No. 3 team in the tournament, are one of just five national seeds remaining is a welcome development for a program that underperformed each of the last two years, failing in both instances to advance out of its home regional.

Dave Van Horn’s squad is the narrow favorite to hoist the trophy at the end of the tournament, and it holds +200 odds to win the national championship at FanDuel. LSU is not far behind at +230, but the Razorbacks and Tigers open CWS play against each other and only one can advance out of Bracket 2 to reach the championship series.

Oregon State (+650) and Coastal Carolina (+650) have equal odds to win the tournament. UCLA (+850) is the largest underdog of the five remaining national seeds. Arizona (+1400), Louisville (+1600) and Murray State round out the field as relative long shots.

Kevin Schnall defends Coastal Carolina’s College World Series return: ‘This is no Cinderella’

Cody Nagel

Coastal Carolina rides 23-game winning streak

Coastal Carolina is a mid-major program, but do not get it twisted; the Chanticleers are not an underdog story. First-year coach Kevin Schnall has his program on the hottest streak in the nation with 23 consecutive wins. That is the longest streak any team has carried into the CWS since 1999. The Sun Belt powerhouse is back in Omaha for the first time since it won the national title in 2016.

“This is no Cinderella,” Schnall said after the Chanticleers swept Auburn in the super regional round. “I wanna make sure that’s known. This is no Cinderella. Coastal Carolina the past century, only eight teams have made the regionals more than us. During that same period we have the sixth-best win percentage and the ninth-most wins. This is not a Cinderella story. We’re one of the most premier, most successful college baseball programs in the entire country.”

The Chanticleers are the first and only team to 50 wins this season with their sparkling 53-11 record. The perfect run through the postseason thus far moved them into the No. 4 spot in the RPI rankings, and Arkansas is the only active team ahead of them.