The Pac-12 will sadly not be represented at the 2024 College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. Yet, the legacy of Pac-12 baseball remains supreme as the conference fades into the history books. This year’s College World Series is the SEC-ACC invitational, with all eight teams coming from those two conferences. However, the Pac-12 and USC created a college baseball story unlike any other. There’s a whopping fact about the CWS which the Pac-12 and USC are centrally responsible for ushering into existence.
The College World Series gets underway Friday and Saturday. How big is Game 1 of the CWS? Teams which lose Game 1 have won the College World Series only 12 times since the event began in 1947, which is close to 15 percent of the time. Yet, the Pac-12 and USC in particular became experts at pulling off that high-wire act.
Get this: USC won four College World Series championships after losing Game 1 of the whole series. In 1958, 1963, 1970, and 1998, the Trojans ran the table after losing their Omaha opener.
Pac-12 teams pulled off this feat in several other instances. Oregon State did it twice this century, the most recent example being in 2018, which is the last time any team lost Game 1 and then lifted the trophy. Arizona did this in 1980. All in all, seven Pac-12 teams lost Game 1 and won the CWS. Arizona and Arizona State also did this in 1976 and 1969, respectively.
A postscript: Only two teams outside the Pacific or Mountain time zones lost Game 1 and then won the College World Series: Texas in 1950, and South Carolina in 2010. The West is best at bouncing back at the College World Series. Sadly, the Pac-12 won’t get a chance to play in Omaha in the next several years, and maybe never again.
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