Reaction: OSU Baseball Receives National Seed Ahead of Hosting Tough Stillwater Regional

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State baseball found out on Sunday evening they would be hosting a Regional in the upcoming NCAA tournament. So, when the selection show aired on Monday morning, that wasn’t a surprise. However, what was a surprise was the Pokes receiving a top-8 national seed (No. 7) going into Regional play this weekend.

“Obviously, the regular season and the body of work it takes to navigate not only our conference, which is super strong, but the challenging non-conference schedule we played, I think really came back to reward us,” said Josh Holliday. “There’s a lot that goes into this; you heard the shared joy of this team and kind of seeing what that regular season felt like and to see them getting recognized as a team and to be awarded a host site to do it at this facility, then to be recognized with [a national] seed, it’s a real complement to our players.”

One of the more fun storylines to come out of the Pokes hosting a regional is this will be Griffin Doersching’s first postseason of his collegiate career.

“Honestly, I think it’s an exceptional experience to have with this team,” Griffin Doersching said of his first postseason experience. “Being able to bring it back to O’Brate [Stadium] and be on that team that first hosts [a regional] here, it means everything.

“I’m excited to get after it and one of my biggest things is it’s just more baseball. Any reason to play more baseball, I’m in for it. So, I’m glad we get to play more.”

The Cowboy slugger is having a huge impact on the season as he’s hitting .287 on the year, with 49 RBIs and 13 homeruns in just 39 hits. Doersching missed the entire month of March with an injury, so just imagine what his numbers would look like with an extra month.

The Cowboys will open up the Stillwater Regional, which is paired with the Chapel Hill Regional, against Missouri State this coming Friday. The other two teams who will be facing off on Friday is Grand Canyon (41-19) and Arkansas (38-18).

The games will be streamed on ESPN+, with ESPN sitting game times at some point later this week.

“There’s three really good baseball teams coming here to play ball,” said coach Holliday. “Along with our team, that makes four highly competitive teams. Game one against Missouri State, we’ve played them earlier this year; coach [Keith] Guttin, one of the best coaches in the history of college baseball, he’s a veteran and a great gentleman and they’ve got a very aggressive and physical team that just won a conference tournament. So, our first game will be a great challenge. Grand Canyon and Arkansas, we played Grand Canyon last year here three times, I coached with Andy Stankiewicz at Arizona State, they’re head coach. Know him and he’s a dear friend and they’ve played really good baseball this year. They’re the regular season champions of their conference, so they can really play. Obviously, Arkansas’ a very fine squad. They’ve been competing at the highest level the whole season. I haven’t studied their team yet, but I know they’re excellent. There’s some really good teams coming and it will be one heck of a tournament.”