On a warm Saturday afternoon in Omaha, Nebraska, the Murray State Racers would start their College World Series journey with an opening-round matchup with the Bruins of UCLA. Facing yet another big-name college baseball brand in UCLA, the Racers would look to bury the emotions of playing in their first-ever College World Series and trying to advance to the winner’s bracket.

With the magnitude of the game being the Opening Round of the 2025 College World Series, Coach Skirka opted to start with his ace, Nic Schutte, on Saturday afternoon against the Bruins. UCLA played a similar hand, going with Michael Barnett as the starter. The way UCLA’s pitching rotation is assembled resembles that of a major league rotation. Barnett gave the Bruins 4.2 innings, giving up three hits, one run, and four strikeouts. UCLA has solid starting pitching and then has about 12 pitchers in the bullpen, each with a specific role to contribute to the Bruins. Despite giving up six runs, Nic Schutte survived five innings, with eight hits and six runs, while striking out three UCLA batters.

UCLA would strike first in the bottom of the first inning with a single run before adding another in the bottom of the second to extend the Bruins lead to 2-0. Timely hitting would once again play in the favor of the UCLA Bruins as they extended the lead to 6-0 over Murray State after a four-run fourth inning. Murray State would add a run in the top half of the 5th, then another in the 6th before adding two more in the 8th inning to cut the UCLA lead to 6-4 midway through the 8th inning. The six runs scored by the Bruins were too much for the Racers to overcome on Saturday, as they fell 6-4 and will now face an elimination game against the loser of LSU and Arkansas on Monday afternoon.

Despite falling behind 6-0, Murray State never quit on Saturday, and I fully expect the Racers not to go down without a fight on Monday as they await LSU or Arkansas following an extremely emotional rivalry game between the Tigers and Razorbacks on Saturday night.

Photo Credits- UCLA Baseball on X