NORMAN, Okla. — There were some unclear moments for the UConn Huskies baseball team after being swept out of the Big East Tournament last Thursday with two excruciating extra inning losses.
The contemplation continued as the team embarked on a 14-hour bus ride from Mason, Ohio on Friday morning back to Storrs – no planes were available after the early exit.
Uncertainty lingered throughout the holiday weekend until Monday afternoon when the Huskies (32-23) learned they were selected as an at-large bid to play in the Norman Regional hosted by the University of Oklahoma.
UConn, the region’s No. 3 seed, will play No. 2 seeded Duke on Friday at 7 p.m. on ESPN+. No. 1 seeded Oklahoma will take on the No. 4 seed Oral Roberts, a participant in the 2023 College World Series, earlier that afternoon. Featuring four teams, the winner of the double-elimination regional will advance to the Super Regionals.
The Huskies are making a program record sixth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, and the trip to Oklahoma will mark the school’s 10th NCAA Tournament appearance since 2010 and its 25th overall.
UConn entered the conference tournament as Big East regular season champions for a fourth consecutive season, but the momentum quickly faded. After losses to Xavier and Georgetown on the same day, the Huskies were unsure if they would make the 64-team NCAA Tournament. Longtime Head Coach Jim Penders was relieved when he heard the good news Monday.
“If we’re going to go out, we want to make sure that we go out playing well. That would have been really awful if we had to go out the way that we did,” Penders told FOX61 Sports Director Jonah Karp. “I’ve never gone two-and-out in a tournament as a head coach. I’d last done it as an assistant coach 24 years ago, so we’re used to winning in the postseason.”
Over the weekend, Penders said his team was closely watching conference tournaments across the country. UConn rooted for heavily favored teams to win so that an underdog couldn’t steal an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, which would then leave the favored team to claim an at-large bid the Huskies needed.
Unlike past seasons, when bids were stolen and hearts were broken, Penders said that fate broke the Huskies’ way this year.
“We’ve been part of those years in 2006 and 2015 and 2017 where a lot of conference bid stealers emerged, and this year it was the opposite. I think it was payback for those teams,” Penders said. “I was thinking about those guys, you know, sitting in that room getting the disappointing news in ’06 and then ’15 and ’17; being the first four out in those years.”
For the players, the ups and downs of this season have become part of the experience. Two years ago, the Huskies came within a win of advancing to the College World Series. Last year, a talented UConn team with a 44-17 record failed to escape the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
To begin this season, expectations were high within the locker room, but the Huskies started off slow with a 9-15 record as they played some of the nation’s top teams thousands of miles away from Storrs.
In Big East play, the tide turned. UConn went 17-4 in the conference during the regular season and won the regular-season title by three games.
All may have seemed lost when UConn took back-to-back losses on their first day of the Big East Tournament, but the dominance in conference play and strength of schedule was enough to impress the selection committee, who chose the Huskies over teams such as Northeastern that had similar resumes. That unpredictability is the beauty of the tournament, and UConn has new life.
Unanimous First Team All-Big East outfielder Korey Morton, a senior from Norwalk, spoke on the long ride home from Ohio and how it allowed the team to refocus itself.
“You had a lot of time to think, but I think everyone kind of showered it off, and we were on to the next, just hopeful to get into the tournament, which we did. It was just a long ride, and we made the most of it,” Morton said.
On Friday, UConn will become the first Division I college baseball team in New England history to make six consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, according to the Hartford Courant, and the players are excited to write more history when the calendar turns to June. First Team All-Big East third baseman Luke Broadhurst, a graduate student from Stafford Springs, has his mind set on Duke.
“Everyone you’re going to be playing this time of year is going to be a really competitive and tough team. You know, I think they see us, and they don’t want to see us in that regional. I don’t think any of them do,” Broadhurst said.
Garret Coe, a senior pitcher from Lakeside, feels that the Huskies are confident. He said the team is looking to build off its shortcomings in the conference tournament and embark in the right direction beginning Friday in Norman.
“I think the guys got the reset that they needed when we came back,” Coe said. “Obviously, not the outcome that we wanted in the conference tournament, but everyone came back with a goal in mind, and I think we’re all on the right path.”
When asked if he’d ever been to Oklahoma, Coe said it would be a first-time experience.
“I can’t say I have, but it will be a first, and hopefully, there’s no tornadoes,” Coe said.
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Dalton Zbierski is a digital content producer and writer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dzbierski@FOX61.com.
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