Ohio State baseball is the forgotten child in the entire athletic family. Nearly every other program that represents the Block O was held in higher regard than the baseball Buckeyes.
That was until this year.
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The Ohio State baseball team has completely flipped its program on its head, and it is thanks to one man, head coach Justin Haire.
Haire inherited a program that was in shambles, and it didn’t get off to a great start. Haire was hired in June of 2024, and the work began.
In his first year, the Buckeyes finished the 2025 season with a 13-35 record and a 5-25 Big Ten mark that placed them 17th in the league out of 25 teams. They stayed committed, and the turnaround was imminent.
The Buckeyes have landed in Omaha, Nebraska, for the 2026 Big Ten Tournament as the 5th seed in the conference, on a three-game win streak with a 29-23 record and an 18-12 Big Ten record.
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They improved at every position this year and are truly one of the great Cinderella stories of college baseball.
Now, looking ahead, Ohio State still has a very long way to go to get to the big dance. They really would need to make a huge run in the Big Ten Tournament, but probably win it just to scratch their name.
As the fifth seed, they open up their tournament play with a matchup against the No. 11 Washington Huskies in a game that, weirdly, begins at 10:00 PM EST.
On the season, these two programs squared off three times in a series that took place on the West Coast. It was three of the most competitive games of the year, as in those three games, the Buckeyes went 1-2, while the run differential in the series is just one run.
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The Buckeyes won game one 10-9 in 10 innings, and Washington followed suit with back-to-back wins of a final score of 5-4. The first one took 11 frames to crown a winner.
The Big Ten Tournament is unlike one I have ever seen. Gone are the days of just a straight bracket. Being that there are 18 teams in the league, the conference had to get creative.
The Tournament is set up in two parts. Seeds 5-12 have to win a qualifier bracket just to have the right to play one of the Top-4 seeds. From there, it is a traditional single-elimination tournament.
The format is pretty wild, but the Buckeyes have a lot of work to do. The run that they need to go on will have to go through some pretty good baseball teams to do it. However, as Haire said, “don’t get on this plane unless you believe that we are going to win this tournament.”
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That’s the mindset. The journey begins on Tuesday.
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