Oregon football’s Dan Lanning talks Ducks’ poise in Iowa victory
Oregon football coach Dan Lanning breaks down the Ducks’ poise in an 18-16 victory over Iowa Nov. 8. Video provided by Oregon Athletics.
The Register-Guard
It’s been a busy offseason for the Oregon baseball team following yet another year in the NCAA Tournament without a trip to Omaha for the College World Series.
The Ducks have to replace a large chunk of contributors that either graduated or signed contracts with professional organizations following the 2025 MLB Draft, including two weekend starters and over half of their lineup.
Fall practices just wrapped up for UO, and sixth-year coach Mark Wasikowski spoke about various topics surrounding college athletics and how it affects the Oregon baseball program Nov. 10, months before the Ducks officially open their 2026 campaign in February.
Here are the highlights, including discussion about NIL, rumors linking Wasikowski to the once-vacant Tennessee job, and nonconference scheduling.
Mark Wasikowski on if Tennessee reached out about head coach vacancy: ‘I didn’t have any direct contact’
The baseball world saw a massive shake-up when longtime Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello left one of the top baseball programs in the country to manage the MLB’s San Francisco Giants in late October.
Immediately following the move, Wasikowski was listed among potential names to replace Vitello by many outlets in the Southeast.
Oregon’s coach said he was happy for Vitello for making an unprecedented move, becoming the first coach to move directly from college to the pros without any prior MLB experience, and happy for who the Volunteers eventually hired: longtime assistant Josh Elander.
“It’s always interesting whenever jobs open up,” Wasikowski said. “I didn’t have any direct contact with Tennessee. I was really happy for Josh Elander, he’s an assistant coach there who got the job. As a longtime assistant coach I always pull for guys to get jobs like that.”
Alongside Wasikowski, Oregon assistant coach Jack Marder was heavily featured in a D1Baseball story listing the top assistants in the country ready for head coaching opportunities.
Oregon baseball’s Mark Wasikowski says he’s happy with offseason talent acquisition, but that recruiting is ‘a lot’ in 2025
The Ducks lost a fair share of stalwarts in their program to the pros and graduation, like starting pitchers Grayson Grinsell and Jason Reitz and batters Mason Neville, Jacob Walsh and Anson Aroz.
Though they bring back a few key contributors in their lineup and pitching staff, Wasikowski and his staff had to go out and make some moves for experienced transfers and high schoolers to bolster their roster and build on a regular season Big Ten title won a year ago.
Oregon welcomed three top-150 recruits into their program, per Perfect Game, and a former WCC Pitcher of the Year in San Diego transfer Cal Scolari, but also “didn’t hit on all the pieces” they were after, per Wasikowski.
“We had a number of guys we were after to try to bolster the staff,” Wasikowski said. “It’s really interesting now with the portal how that goes. It’s a lot.”
Oregon’s coach mentioned that without the donor support the Ducks do have and businesses like “Diamond Ducks,” which create and manage revenue generating events and initiatives to fund scholarships and NIL opportunities, Oregon wouldn’t “have a chance.”
Competing against baseball programs in the SEC that historically have much-higher funded programs, Wasikowski and the Ducks have had to navigate this new world of college sports.
“We were really aggressive in trying to go after everybody out there,” Wasikowski said. “Unfortunately in our game today, its not just about giving a kid a full scholarship and having him here on a good visit. There’s a lot more that goes into recruiting these days, specifically donor-related, NIL-related, rev-share-related. Those are really competitive recruiting adventures for high school and for portal guys these days, more so than ever before.”
Wasikowski did say that Oregon’s situation is continuing to improve and he hopes those improvements and donor support leads to the Ducks being able to land all the best available players in the portal and otherwise.
Mark Wasikowski on SEC teams and nonconference scheduling: ‘There are a lot of teams that also won’t play us right now’
Though the Big Ten is a known power in football, that is not the case in collegiate baseball. The conference boasts strong teams, but with a 10-game conference schedule and the Ducks unable to control who they play in an 18-team conference year-in and year-out, it makes it a challenge when arranging its nonconference slate.
Though the Ducks won the Big Ten in the regular season last season and finished with one of the better records in baseball at 42-16 and 22-8 in conference, they were largely considered on the bubble in whether they would host a regional as a top-16 seed heading into the selection show for postseason. If not for a sweep of the Oregon State Beavers during their nonconference slate, its unlikely the Ducks would’ve hosted in the regional round a year ago.
“We’ve talked about that long and hard,” Wasikowski said. “We’re going to have to assess that on a year-to-year basis and see if it is. The off-balance schedule in the Big Ten is going to probably make that an interesting topic, depending on who you do and don’t play in the Big Ten every year.”
Last season was the Ducks’ first foray in a new conference, and they are taking their lessons learned to build out a better nonconference schedule that features neutral site matchups in Las Vegas and a road series against Santa Barbara.
Still, Wasikowski said its been a challenge to get top teams from the South to agree to play the Ducks.
“There are a lot teams that also won’t play us right now,” Wasikowski said. “Which is unfortunate. We’ve gone as far as to try to go on the road and not even ask for a return series against SEC teams to just go and show up and play them at their place without even a guarantee to come and we’ve been told no.”
Wasikowski said that the Ducks are trying to be “aggressive” in their out-of-conference scheduling but that sometimes it doesn’t make sense for programs from other conferences to play teams like the Ducks.
“Ultimately, you’ve got to win your games,” he said. “So we need to win our games.”
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football and women’s basketball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on Bluesky and X.