Cal Poly Baseball will continue their postseason run with a trip to Morgantown, W.Va. to face No. 16 West Virginia with a trip to the College World Series on the line.
Neither the Los Angeles regional champion Mustangs (39-22) or Morgantown regional champion Mountaineers (43-25) have ever played in Omaha in June.
However, this is Cal Poly’s first foray into the Super Regional round, while this is the third straight year that West Virginia has appeared in a Super Regional. They lost to LSU and Clemson in their other two appearances.
Cal Poly’s 3-0 weekend earned them the 18th spot in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association poll, the first time having been ranked this year after being No. 25 for a week in the Perfect Game rankings last season.
It’s Cal Poly’s first time facing West Virginia in any sport, and the first time playing in West Virginia. The only other time Cal Poly faced a team from West Virginia was when softball fell 6-5 in extras to the other in-state Division-I program Marshall, but that happened in San Diego.
The offensive makeup of the Mountaineers are built on speed, speed and more speed. Two players on West Virginia in Paul Schoenfield and Armani Guzman have more stolen bases than Cal Poly does as a team (22), and they are top 10 in triples as a squad.
While their 120 doubles are top 30 in the nation, that pales in comparison to the Mustangs’ 155 two baggers, which is third in the nation and most of any team remaining. Both clubs hit .303 but Cal Poly has the edge by a couple of ten-thousandths.
Like the Mustangs and Ryan Tayman, catcher Ryan Kelly is the catalyst for West Virginia and flirted with a .400 average all the way into April.
Pitching matchups for the weekend should look like this unless something unexpected happens.
Griffin Naess (8-4, 4.00) gets another start in the postseason to add on to an already impressive resume of postseason play. He matches up against Big 12 pitcher of the year Maxx Yehl (8-2, 2.12), fresh off of missing 2025 with Tommy John surgery. Yehl has come back with a vengeance in 2026.
Carson Turnquist (9-2, 3.35) recovered from his own Tommy John surgery last year and has also hit the ground running in his first full season back from injury. He’ll get Chansen Cole (9-1, 2.87), who started the tournament opener against Binghamton on Friday and pitched in the winner-take-all game against Kentucky on Monday.
Josh Volmerding (1-1, 6.58) seems to be in line for the start on a winner-take-all game three if the past two weekends are to be believed. He earned the win against Saint Mary’s in the finals after missing the majority of the season with an injury. Dawson Montesa (5-5, 5.78) would likely draw against Volmerding.
Both teams look for their first ever College World Series berth, with Friday and Saturday games starting at 9 a.m PT/noon ET, and a potential winner-take-all game on Sunday with a time to be announced. All three games will take place at Kendrick Family Ballpark in Morgantown.
