The Gamecocks are officially in the Hall. Two of the most iconic figures in South Carolina baseball history, Kip Bouknight and Ray Tanner, have officially been selected for induction into the College Baseball Hall of Fame. The honor is a testament to their impact not just on the diamond, but on the culture of South Carolina baseball. The pair are part of the 2025 induction class announced Monday by the College Baseball Foundation, marking the first time that the Gamecocks have ever been enshrined in the Hall.

They are part of a group of 21 inductees who will be honored at the 2026 Night of Champions presented by Prariefire in Overland Park, Kansas, on February 12, 2026, the ceremonial kickoff to the 2026 college baseball season.

Kip Bouknight: South Carolina’s All-Time Ace

Bouknight is the most decorated pitcher in South Carolina history, and his stats speak for themselves.

• Career record: 45-12, the winningest pitcher to ever wear garnet and black

• School record 482 innings pitched and 66 career starts

• 457 career strikeouts, the most in program history

• 2000 SEC Pitcher of the Year and SEC Champion

During his best season in the year 2000, Bouknight went 17-1, leading South Carolina to a 55-10 record, an SEC title, and back-to-back Super Regionals in 2000 and 2001. He was also named a consensus All-American and the Golden Spikes Award. Bouknight is only one of five Golden Spikes winners in this year’s Hall of Fame class.

Ray Tanner: A Baseball Empire

Tanner’s coaching resume is second to none in college baseball, and now his accolades will include a Hall of Fame nod. In his 16 years as head coach of the Gamecocks, he turned South Carolina into a national powerhouse.

• 738 wins at South Carolina, 1,133 career wins overall

• Back-to-back national titles in 2010 and 2011

• Runner-up finishes in 2002 and 2012

• Six College World Series appearances

• Three SEC Championships, six SEC East titles, and 10 NCAA Super Regional appearances

From 2010 to 2012, Tanner’s team posted an NCAA record of 22 straight postseason wins and 12 straight wins in Omaha. South Carolina set the standard for college baseball during that time. Tanner coached a star-studded lineup of Gamecock greats as well, including two National Players of the Year (Bouknight and Michael Roth), two SEC Players of the Year, and two SEC Scholar-Athletes of the Year. Last season, the field at Founders Park was officially renamed Ray Tanner Field in his honor.

Following his coaching tenure, Tanner serced as South Carolina’s Athletic Director from 2012-2024. In that time, he oversaw four national championships (2015 equestrian, 2017, 2022, 2024 women’s basketball), 21 SEC titles, and several of South Carolina’s best season.

History and Legacy

Bouknight and Tanner, whose numbers are both retired at South Carolina, will now forever be etched in college baseball history. It’s a statement for South Carolina baseball.

Tustin (Calif.) Mission Viejo wide receiver Vance Spafford committed to Georgia over seven months ago, but the four-star is not committed to the Bulldogs any longer. He has flipped his commitment to Miami.

UCLA and Washington received official visits and other schools were still in pursuit, but he has decided to be a Hurricane.

“Miami has been on my mind pretty heavily for a while,” Spafford told On3. “I have been down there a few times and when I was there for three days in the spring, they made a big impression on me. It is one of my few visits where it was nothing but smiles. It was all positivity down there. That feeling stayed with me.”

Spafford was scheduled to take his official visit to Miami this past weekend, but was unable to make it because of the flu. That didn’t stop him from making the call.

“When I told Miami the news, coach Cristobal was yelling a lot, KB (Kevin Beard) was jumping around and coach Dawson was throwing up the U. I felt the love. That is how they have always made me feel.”

Spafford is excited about the staff he will play for and where the Miami program is going

Spafford had great relationships with coaches at Georgia. He was in Athens multiple times and he has nothing but respect for the staff there, but he is all in with the program in Coral Gables.

“Miami just kept that relationship going,” Spafford said. “Coach Cristobal, coach Dawson, KB – they hit me up all the time. KB is amazing. He knows what he is doing. He develops receivers, he is fun to talk to and we have a great relationship.

“Coach Dawson runs a great offense. He has a history of receivers being productive and I like my fit. I see a great opportunity to come in and make an impact in his offense. Coach Cristobal is great too. He has won everything he has been and Miami is on that track.”

Spafford is planning to take his official visit to Miami when it hosts Notre Dame in the fall. He is expecting big things out of the Hurricanes.

“Miami is going to be a contending team for sure in the coming years. Back in the day, they were killing it. Miami was dominant and they are starting to have that again. Miami had a great showing last year and it is going to get better.

“I am very excited about my future at Miami.”

According to On3’s Pete Nakos, Virginia second baseman Henry Godbout has entered the NCAA transfer portal. Godbout goes in there with a ‘Do Not Contact’ tag attached to his name as well. He might already have a destination in mind after spending the past three seasons in Charlottesville.

Godbout was one of the best players in the ACC last season, earning second-team all-conference honors. In 50 games played, 48 of those were at second base. Virginia called upon Godbout to man the hot corner on two occasions, potentially showing a little versatility.

Teams are going to love the offensive production Godbout produces, though. He finished with a .309 batting average in 191 at-bats during the 2025 season. His OPS finished at .894 due to eight home runs, 10 doubles, and a triple. Godbout got a base via walks on 26 occasions and is not prone to a strikeout, only having 19 on the stat sheet.

Playing a position such as second base means defense is just as important. Luckily, Godbout put up good numbers there too. He recorded just five errors on the season for a fielding percentage of 0.974.

Virginia has seen plenty of turnover inside the program since Brian O’Connor left in favor of the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Plenty of talented players have decided to leave, with Godbout being the latest example.

Virginia retains shortstop Eric Becker for 2026 season

Virginia SS Eric Becker was one of the top names in the NCAA Transfer Portal after entering following the coaching change for the Cavaliers. Becker is expected to withdraw his name from the portal and return to Charlottesville, sources tell On3’s Pete Nakos.

During his recruitment, schools like Mississippi State and Texas as well as Florida were reportedly involved per Nakos. However, in the end, Becker will back up right where he started at UVA.

Becker just finished his sophomore season, with 95 appearances made over two seasons, with Virginia. He has batted .366 while slugging .637, hitting 17 home runs with 98 RBI. He would bat at .368 while slugging at .617 as a sophomore, hitting nine of his homers and posting 52 of the RBI as the team’s best hitter in his second year in college.

Then, defensively at shortstop, Becker would put out 95 with a fielding percentage of .925 as an underclassman. With that, Becker would be a selection to the All-ACC Third Team this past season in 2025.

On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this report

Click here to view Trev Alberts’ Monday press conference.

Trev Alberts’ job title is Texas A&M’s Director of Athletics. In some ways, tailor maybe should be added.

That’s a reaction to how Alberts described the task he and A&M face in navigating the changing future of college athletics.

“(It’s) how to thread the needle between tradition and modernization,” Alberts said in a Monday meeting with local reporters inside a third-floor conference room at Kyle Field.

Maintaining traditions at A&M won’t be a problem. Successfully modernizing A&M’s athletic department to excel in the new era of Name, Imagine & Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing projects to be much more challenging.

Reacting to the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which allows NCAA member schools to directly pay student-athletes, Alberts announced that A&M will distribute $18 million to football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball.

A popular national template suggests directing 75 percent of funds to football, 15 percent to basketball, five percent to baseball and five percent to women’s sports.

“Some institutions have chosen to use that (75-15-5-5 model) as a template for their institution,” Alberts said. “Our percentages don’t reflect that. We’ve chosen to make market-based decisions based on revenue.”

The distribution could cause derision within athletic programs. Coaches in different programs could be competing against each other to get more funding.

Alberts said that hasn’t been a problem at A&M, but he has heard that has been an issue for other colleagues.

Alberts declined to reveal the percentages to be shared with A&M’s athletes for competitive reasons. But football is the only revenue-producing sport at Texas A&M, so it stands to reason that the majority of A&M’s shared revenue will go to football players.

“I’m not going to run out and tell you exactly what the numbers are and what the percentages are because there’s a competitive piece to that, right?” he said. “But I think you’re going to start to figure out where the numbers lie.”

He said in a year there may be more data available that provides at least guidelines how players perhaps should be compensated not only by sport, but by position.

Alberts acknowledged that some programs could be at a disadvantage to conference opponents.

For example, Kentucky, which puts great emphasis on basketball, figures to share a greater percentage of revenue with its basketball players than many other SEC programs.

“You’re not going to knowingly put any of your programs at a competitive disadvantage,” Alberts said. “But I think it’s absolutely true you could find yourselves in a situation — based on the priorities of the investments — that some of your programs will have less rev share than some of their competitors.”

Some of the differences, at least, could potentially be offset by greater NIL opportunities.

Alberts said if a program, like football, has players earning substantial money though fair-market NIL deals then some funds could be redirected to other sports.

To enhance those NIL possibilities, Alberts said a new position is being created to help locate NIL opportunities and ensure they meet the standard “fair market value” as determined by Deloitte, which will act as a third-party clearinghouse for NIL deals.

“We’re not ready to announce a name, but we are hiring a new position that will be an associate AD reporting directly to me that is an attorney,” Alberts said. “It’s basically, what is our strategy and how do we leverage every one of our assets?

“If we’re able to get fair market value NIL deals at a certain level, we may not need as much rev share there. We can put the rev share over at this sport because they’re not as successful. So, that’s why I think that fair market value NIL strategy is going to be really important to our future.”

Alberts later added: “We have to be better than our peers. To me, that’s the differentiator in the game. That’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort in making sure we have a good strategy there (NIL).”

Alberts is hopeful that a sound, effective strategy could launch A&M to great competitive success.

“This is our time,” he said. “If we have the courage to make tough decisions and act and modernize in some areas, I think Texas A&M can separate and do things we’ve never done here before.

“That’s why we’re all here. The opportunities are here at Texas A&M to do things that most people can’t do because of scale, because of resources and other things.”

The latest ESPN mock draft has plenty of guards going in the lottery. Their experts, Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo, believe that eight guards and/or wings will go in the first 13 picks.

After Cooper Flagg (Mavericks) and Dylan Harper (Spurs), the latest mock has guards V.J. Edgecombe (Sixers), Kon Knueppel (Hornets) and Jeremiah Fears (Jazz) rounding out the top five. Ace Bailey, formerly considered a top three pick, slips to the Wizards at No. 6. The Suns, who are acquiring the No.  10 pick from the Rockets, are projected to take South Carolina big man Collin Murray-Boyles.

Here’s more draft-related info:

• In his latest mock draft, The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie believes that the Sixers trading down from the No. 3 slot remains a real possibility. The Hornets have also had discussions moving both up and down the board from the No. 4 spot, while Texas wing Tre Johnson could be a surprise selection in the top five. Johnson could go as high as No. 3.
• Speaking of Murray-Boyles, he worked out for the Trail Blazers over the weekend, as did Illinois guard Kasparas Jakucionis, Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian tweets. ESPN ranks Murray-Boyles at No. 13 overall with Jakucionis at No. 10. Portland owns the No. 11 pick.
• Just 32 non-international early entrants from colleges and other basketball teams or leagues and 14 international players remain in the draft, a dramatic dropoff from recent years. What’s the difference? NIL money has motivated most prospects to stay in college, unless they believe they’ll go in the first round, as Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports details. “If you are not a guaranteed first-round pick, top-20, top-30 guy—unless you really do not want to play college basketball anymore, we are recommending and most of them are staying in school as long as they possibly can,” Michael Raymond, president and founder of Raymond Representation, told Christovich.
• The draft is usually headed by one-and-dones and other underclassmen. However, there are more seasoned college players who will come off the board. Hoops Hype’s Cyro Asseo de Choch takes a look at the cream of the senior crop.
• The Athletic’s Law Murray breaks down the biggest draft needs for each team, identifying the picks each of them hold.

Former Nevada baseball coach Jay Johnson is a national champion again. Now at LSU, Johnson has won two national titles in the last three seasons, bringing the Tigers two crowns during his first four years on campus after being hired, by among others, Stephanie Rempe, who was at LSU at the time and now runs the Nevada athletic department as athletic director. We lead this week’s Monday Mailbag with a Johnson-focused question before hitting some other topics. Thanks, as always, for the inquiries.

Put Jay Johnson near the top of the list, but I have him No. 2 right now. Here’s the top 10.

1. Head football coach Buck Shaw (won 62 college games with five top-15 national finishes in 10 years post-Nevada while winning 90 more games in the AAFC/NFL, including the 1960 NFL Championship with the Eagles; he was the 49ers’ first head coach)

2. Head baseball coach Jay Johnson (two national titles; four College World Series in 10 years post-Nevada)

3. Assistant baseball coach John Savage (800-plus wins; four College World Series; one national title post-Nevada)

4. Assistant football coach Bobby Petrino (137 college wins, one NFL head job, one famous motorcycle crash and one neck brace post-Nevada)

5. Men’s basketball coach Eric Musselman (two Elite Eights, three Sweet 16s in six seasons post-Nevada)

6. Head football coach Ray “R.E.” Courtright (two nationals titles as Michigan’s men’s golf coach post-Nevada)

7. Swimming and diving coach Mike Shrader (nine Mountain West titles and 11 coach of the year honors in 18 seasons at San Diego State post-Nevada)

8. Football assistant coach John L. Smith (157 college wins with stints at Idaho, Utah State, Louisville, Michigan State, Arkansas, Fort Lewis and Kentucky State post-Nevada)

9. Men’s basketball coach Sonny Allen (most of Allen’s great career happened before he was Nevada’s coach, but he did go on to coach a WNBA team, the Sacramento Monarchs, post-Nevada)

10. Head football coach Jim Aiken (just 21-20 at Oregon post-Nevada, but that included a top-10 season and Cotton Bowl appearance in 1948)

Next would have been former Nevada track and field coach Curt Kraft, who led East Carolina to three conference titles in 19 seasons post-Nevada. Former Nevada baseball assistant Jay Uhlman has done a nice job at Tulane, leading that team to two NCAA Regionals in four years. And a special shoutout to Nevada football coach James Hopper, who was the Wolf Pack’s coach for one season in 1900 (4-2-1) and a year at Cal in 1904 (6-1-1) before turning to writing where he published 450 short stories and six novels as a influential writer in the first couple of decades of the 1900s.

Among head coaches to move on, the only one I know who would win a national title outside of Jay Johnson is former Nevada football coach Ray “R.E.” Courtright, who won two national titles as Michigan’s men’s golf coach.

As far as Dodgers vs. Padres, only two times was a batter intentionally hit in that series. And both times it was Shohei Ohtani. So, I don’t know why the Padres were so upset. They brought up the fact the Dodgers have hit Fernando Tatis Jr. six hits since he made his MLB debut. In the same time period, the Padres have hit Dodgers catcher Will Smith 11 times, Max Muncy nine times and Mookie Betts six times. Cry me a river, Padres. San Diego pitchers have hit 68 Dodgers batters to the Dodgers pitchers hitting 37 Padres batters since Tatis’ MLB debut. And the Dodgers have as many World Series titles (two) in the last five years as the Padres have NL West championships in the last 26 seasons. This is not a rivalry. The Padres just want to make it one. If it did come to blows, Joe Kelly would come out of retirement to be Nolan Ryan to Tatis’s Robin Venutra.

I actually could see that happening at some point as Jay Johnson remembers his time at Nevada fondly. I’m surprised he hasn’t scheduled a game against Nevada, either when he was at Arizona or now at LSU. Let’s make that happen.

And as LSU won its second national title in three years last season, I got to thinking former McQueen High standout Robby Snelling could have been on both of those Tigers teams. I don’t blame him for taking the $3 million signing bonus after being a first-round draft pick in 2023. That was the right move. But he would have been a freshman on the 2023 LSU title team and a draft-eligible junior this season after committing to Johnson and LSU out of high school before turning pro. Snelling is having a solid season at Double-A Pensacola as a 21-year-old this year, sitting a 2-5 with a 4.18 ERA in 12 games with 70 strikeouts in 60.1 innings as his velocity has spiked back up over a dip last season. But those would have been cool experiences for him.

Steve Alford played at Indiana a number of times while Iowa’s head coach from 1999-2007 but has not played the Hoosiers since then. That’s 18 total seasons, including six each at New Mexico, UCLA and Nevada. If it hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t happen. Although that’d be a cool moment for Alford as he’s still an Indiana legend.

I’m sure Nate Yeskie’s had a lot of head-coaching offers as he reportedly turned down Mississippi State a number of years ago and has been one of college baseball’s top pitching coaches for the last two decades, which includes a national title at Oregon State in 2018 and LSU in 2025. At LSU, Yeskie has a base salary of $400,000 and got $80,000 in postseason bonuses this season. That’s head-coach money at most places. It just comes down to whether Yeskie wants to be a head coach. I would guess he will be a head coach soon as he wanted the Oregon State job that instead went to Mitch Canham in 2020. LSU’s last pitching coach, Wes Johnson, became Georgia’s head coach in 2023, so Yeskie could be in for a similar kind of job.

I sat down with Steve Alford today for a 25-minute interview on the offseason that I’ll post on our website later today or tomorrow. I asked about the smaller point guard model that’s being used this season (6-foot Tyler Rolison, 6-1 Tayshawn Comer and 5-9 Myles Walker) and he said that’s largely coincidental, adding the team’s ballhandling and ability to pressure the ball defensively should be improved over last year. He said the Wolf Pack’s post size (7-1 Jeriah Coleman, 6-10 Joel Armotrading, 6-9 Elijah Price, 6-8 Kaleb Lowery, 6-9 Ethan Croley) should be a plus. He added shooting is a question mark but something that’s been fine in the first couple of offseason practices.

I would agree Nevada seems to have a faster, more athletic, more defensive-oriented team compared to last year, although that does carry some offensive efficiency questions. Alford’s first impressions of the 2025-26 team have been positive.

“Really good, really excited about it,” Alford said. “It’s just adapting to a new era. Last year was the first year in 34 years we didn’t have a freshman on the team. As I enter year 35, it’s gonna be the first year we’ve had nine new players. You only get 13 scholarships, and we’re gonna have nine new players. That’s a lot. … We wanted to, I think first and foremost, become more athletic. I think last year’s team, though we were a little bit older, wasn’t quite as athletic as we’d like to be. I think we’ve increased our athleticism. I think we’re gonna be deeper up front now, which will help us. Jeriah getting an extra year. Ethan being a freshman. Joel and Elijah playing those positions. Our freshmen don’t look like freshmen. Ethan and and Peyton (White) are very physical, and Myles is a very quick, explosive point guard. They don’t look like freshmen, which is good. I think we’ll be a more athletic, more physical team is my hope.

“And then we wanted to add scoring and obviously shooting. There’s some question marks with shooting, but as I’ve watched the four or five practices that we’ve had, these guys know how to shoot the basketball. I think Tayshawn brings us another point guard with TR, which will really help us. I think Kenan gave us that presence. Last year, Kobe (Sanders) not a true point guard, more of a combo. And then TR really came on from January on. But a lot of the success that we’ve had prior to Nevada is playing multiple point guards. And I think the way the game has gone, you’re looking at the Pacer-Thunder series, you’ve got a lot of ball-handling guards. And I think our ball handling has a chance to be at a level that we haven’t had it. And if we can do that, then I think that creates more opportunities for us offensively and opens up better shooting opportunities for us. But also what we can do defensively, I think this has the potential — again, it’s just potential; it’s early — but potentially our deepest team, our most athletic team where we can increase pressure when we wanna increase pressure and be a little bit more disruptive defensively is my hope than what we’ve been maybe in the last year or two.”

There are a lot of great writers in the league. I’ll shout out the Albuquerque Journal’s Geoff Grammer; the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Mark Zeigler; The Coloradoan’s Kevin Lytle; The Gazette’s Brent Briggeman; the Fresno Bee’s Robert Kuwada; and BJ Rains going independent with Bronco Nation News and making it work is really cool. Those guys have been covering the league for a long time.

And I’ll take mini-golf, although I love TopGolf. We go to Roseville once or twice a year to hit some balls at that facility. It will be nice to have that in Reno at the Grand Sierra Resort in a couple of years.

Here are the 10 biggest betting-line underdog spreads for Nevada dating to 2000:

1. at Penn State, +43.5 (2025) — TBD

2. at USC, +38 (2023) — Didn’t cover

3. at Florida State, +35.5 (2013) — Didn’t cover

4. at Texas A&M, +32 (2015) — Covered

5. at Colorado State, +30 (2001) — Covered

6. at Washington State, +28.5 (2017) — Didn’t cover

7. vs. Kansas, +28 (2023) — Covered

8t. at Fresno State, +27.5 (2004) — Didn’t cover

8t. at Boise State, +27.5 (2011) — Covered

8t. at Notre Dame, +27.5 (2016) — Didn’t cover

So, that’s 4-5 against the spread and 0-9 straight up. The biggest underdog line Nevada has won straight up is 17 points (against San Diego State in 2019 and Washington in 2003). Since joining the FBS in 1992, Nevada has played eight top-10 teams, going 1-7 in those games, the win coming against No. 3 Boise State in 2010.

Jeff Tisdel went 23-22 overall and 13-8 in conference in four seasons at Nevada with two first-place finishes and a second with a bowl win (the 1996 Las Vegas Bowl). Yes, he inherited a much better situation than Ken Wilson, but Tisdel’s time had some legitimate successes. And while Wilson didn’t have much success as a head coach (4-20 in two years), he did contribute to a lot of success to Nevada as an assistant. If you’re just looking at head-coaching tenure Tisdel <>> Wilson. Tisdel had a really good head-coaching career post-Nevada, too, going 82–36 in 11 years at Sierra College.

Zero percent.

No. The revenue sharing the colleges can now pay athletes is on top of NIL deals, not in replacement of them. And while there’s a clearinghouse to approve these deals, NIL Go, I don’t think that will do much to limit NIL deals. Major donors can still have a huge impact on roster construction.

Many colleges have announced which teams they will share revenue with, although few have offered specifics per team. Nevada has only said its goal is to hit $5 million combined in revenue sharing and NIL for the 2025-26 season, which should put it in the competitive range of the Mountain West if it gets to that number. We don’t have a per-sport breakdown on which teams will get money, but that list will definitely include football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball. I imagine softball will be on that list, too. It should be. Nevada should be investing heavily into softball right now.

No. LSU would get destroyed. There’s a massive jump from the SEC to Triple-A let alone MLB.

I watched zero seconds of this year’s NBA Finals, and it had nothing to do with the talking heads on ESPN, although those talking heads are annoying. Pacers versus Thunder just didn’t interest me, and almost none of the games were close. Games 1 and 4 had some tension. That’s about it. And while we’ve seen a lot of ink spilled trying to figure out why pitchers keep needing Tommy John surgery, let’s get some think pieces on why three Eastern Conference stars who wear No. 0 — the Bucks’ Damian Lillard; the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum; and the Pacers Tyrese Haliburton — all tore their Achilles in the playoff. Tatu is 27 and Haliburton is 25. That’s too young to suffer that kind of injury.

1) I’ve tried to make Smashburgers on my Camp Chef flat-top grill and they don’t turn out as well as my regular burgers, so I’m off the trend.

2) Caramelized onions.

3) Mustard if I have to pick one. If I get two, add ketchup. Never mayo. That’s gross.

4) I’ve never met anybody who publicly admits they like coleslaw. French fries are the best. If you can’t have that as a burger side, just do a salad.

No idea. There are many “pros” to living on the West Coast, but one of the best is the Pacific time zone sports starts. Staying up until 10 p.m. to watch games end on the West Coast is tough enough. But that’s 1 a.m. on the East Coast. That’s crazy. NFL games don’t start until 1 p.m. on the East Coast rather than the 10 a.m. start on the West Coast. More proof the west coast in the best coast.

See y’all next week!

Sports columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. He writes a weekly Monday Mailbag despite it giving him a headache and it taking several hours to write. But people seem to like it, so he does it anyway. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.