{"id":336243,"date":"2026-06-14T19:07:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/336243\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T19:07:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:07:18","slug":"college-world-series-clunker-has-texas-longhorns-facing-elimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/336243\/","title":{"rendered":"College World Series clunker has Texas Longhorns facing elimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

OMAHA, Neb. \u2014 Texas baseball <\/a>picked a fine time to pull a clunker.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

History says national title No. 7 isn\u2019t in the cards in 2026, <\/a>and after watching the Longhorns stumble through an embarrassing 7-1 loss<\/a> Saturday to SEC champion Georgia in the first round of the College World Series<\/a>, a “1-2-3 Cancun” huddle is likely before the national championship series.<\/p>\n

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\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns pitcher Dylan Volantis (99) celebrates a third out with catcher Carson Tinney (8) during the NCAA Baseball Regional game against Tarleton State at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Saturday, May 30, 2026 in Austin.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

BASEBALL: Texas closer Cozart has personal CWS goal in Omaha<\/a><\/p>\n

The 25,002 that showed up to Charles\u00a0Schwab Field expecting a classic got just that. From the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n

The guys from Austin didn\u2019t show. They lost for a myriad reasons, the biggest being burly Georgia junior\u00a0right-hander Joey Volchko who pitched the game of his life: a career-first complete game four-hitter with 15 strikeouts and a single walk in the ninth inning. This, one week after he gave up six runs and two homers in the first four innings of the wild 13-12 win over Mississippi State in the Athens Super Regional opener.<\/p>\n

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Volchko stonewalled Texas\u2019 All-America trio of Aiden Robbins, Carson Tinney and Anthony Pack, Jr. They went 0-for-11 with seven strikeouts. Robbins didn\u2019t have the same juice that produced five homers in the first rounds of the playoffs while Tinney\u2019s defensive lapses overshadowed an 0-for-3 performance. Pack struggled because he rarely saw a fastball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt a lot of confidence and comfort with the game plan we came in with,\u201d\u00a0Volchko said. \u201cThere was a very clear plan so to come out there and execute\u2026 that was huge.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0Volchko was amazing, Texas coach Jim Schlossnagle<\/a> pointed to what amounted to major meltdown in another area:<\/p>\n

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\u201cFrom a defensive standpoint, that\u2019s the worst game we played the whole season which is super disappointing on our end. That\u2019s a very bad taste in our mouth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlikely errors doom Longhorns<\/p>\n

No one had catcher Carson\u00a0Tinney committing two throwing errors in the first inning after he made only two in his previous 50 starts behind the plate but those throws (coupled with Rylan Lujo\u2019s two-run homer off the staff ace Dylan Volantis) put the Horns in a hole.<\/p>\n

Volchko wasn\u2019t going to be denied.<\/p>\n

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The book on Texas is obvious: Make Volantis mortal and dare the others to step up. The Bulldogs accomplished goal No. 1, and now Texas is the team pushed to the brink of elimination because the bats were eerily silent. Four hits. Fifteen strikeouts.<\/p>\n

A win over Alabama in a Monday matinee will keep the season alive, then there\u2019s an even more daunting task with the Bulldogs and surging Oklahoma standing between the Horns and their first finals appearance since the 2009 loss to LSU.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns head coach Jim Schlossnagle walks the dugout ahead of the NCAA Baseball Regional game against Holy Cross at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Friday, May 29, 2026 in Austin.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Texas has never won a national championship after losing the opener under the\u00a0NCAA\u2019s current double-elimination format and the odds of that happening over this next week are about as good as Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell running an underground sports book from the basement of Jones AT&T Stadium.<\/p>\n

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The smart money is on Georgia or Oklahoma to represent Bracket 2 in the championship round.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ced’s Corner\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sign up for Cedric Golden\u2019s newsletter <\/a>for hot takes and expert analysis each Tuesday on Texas Longhorns football and beyond. \u00a0It’s called Ced\u2019s Corner, from the mind of the American-Statesman\u2019s resident sports columnist, the NSMA’s 2025 Texas Sportswriter of the Year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Horns aren\u2019t going down without a fight but make no mistake, they\u2019re going down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play every game the same,\u201d said shortstop Adrian Rodriguez. \u201c(We play) to a standard and not scoreboard. \u201cWe play our game and today we didn\u2019t meet that standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Texas has a Georgia problem<\/p>\n

As reality started to set in at\u00a0Schwab, a group of Georgia fans knife in the backs of a beaten and battered Texas baseball team with three biting words.
\u201cJust like football,\u201d they chanted.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s common knowledge that Texas football coach Steve\u00a0Sarkisian<\/a> hasn\u2019t figured out Kirby Smart\u2019s reigning SEC football champions but we never thought Horns baseball would fall under a similar spell, especially with their staff ace opening up the College World Series in prime time.<\/p>\n

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As the Horns stood in the dugout scratching their heads after a disastrous first inning, the fans looked up on the video board and there sat Smart doing an in-stadium interview.<\/p>\n

No wonder\u00a0Sark didn\u2019t show.<\/p>\n

Neither did the baseball team.<\/p>\n

Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OMAHA, Neb. \u2014 Texas baseball picked a fine time to pull a clunker. History says national title No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[67002,75202,782,47365,27,29,537,20340,28],"class_list":["post-336243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-college-world-series","tag-college-world-series-baseball","tag-georgia-bulldogs","tag-jim-schlossnagle","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-baseball","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}