Cowboy Baseball's NCAA Tournament Bid Something to Celebrate

Oklahoma State’s spot in the NCAA Tournament is nothing short of a spectacular accomplishment.

On Monday, the NCAA announced the field and bracket for the 2025 Division I baseball tournament, and the Cowboys, against all odds, earned an at-large bid. Sure, coming into Selection Monday, the Cowboys seemed like a pretty solid bet to earn a spot in the field and keep their season going.

However, telling someone a month ago that the Cowboys would make the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid would have been absurd. Exactly one month ago, on April 26, the Cowboys fell in their second game of a series at Cincinnati 11-4. 

That loss dropped OSU to 18-21 on the season and marked its second straight loss after it finally began to rebuild some momentum. At that point, it had been nearly a month since the Cowboys had a winning record, last having more wins than losses in the middle of a series where they were swept by Kansas in late March.

OSU never looked all that impressive in nonconference play and certainly didn’t look anything like a team that could compete in the Big 12 through the first several weeks of conference play, much less the team picked to win the Big 12 in the preseason. Throughout that disappointing stretch that put the Cowboys three games under .500 with less than a month left in the season, they never wavered or lost confidence in what they could accomplish.

After dropping that second game against Cincinnati, OSU rebounded with an 8-1 win in the finale and followed it with a couple of wins at Baylor to even its record. After dropping the finale in Waco, OSU was only one game under .500 entering its final six games of the regular season.

At that point, it still seemed like OSU’s best bet was to win some of those games and perhaps build confidence going into the conference tournament and fighting for the automatic bid. Instead, Josh Holliday’s team won all six of its final regular season games, sweeping UCF and Arizona State en route to getting five games over .500 entering the postseason.

While they only split their two Big 12 Tournament games, a 28-23 mark was enough for the Cowboys to make their way into the tournament and keep their dreams of Omaha alive. Sure, it might feel like a dream with how the Cowboys managed to finish this season, but the Cowboys aren’t awake yet, and those dreams could reach bigger heights than anyone could have imagined just a few weeks ago.