PULLMAN, Wash. \u2014 Entering the 2026 season, Washington State Cougar baseball was\u00a0doubted heavily. Now, Wazzu is at the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n
WSU was selected to finish second-to-last in the Mountain West Conference preseason poll and had just one player named to the preseason all-conference team. Fast forward to the end of the season, and the Cougs finished second in the regular-season standings, won the MWC Tournament championship, had five players earn all-conference honors, had the conference Pitcher of the Year in Nick Lewis and are heading to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016.<\/p>\n
From an outside perspective, this year’s performance from the Cougs was surprising after WSU won just 18 games last season and went 11-19 in Mountain West play under second-year head coach Nathan Choate. But if you ask the Cougs, it’s no surprise, as they credit the group for sticking together and not leaving the program \u2014 something common in today’s era of college athletics.<\/p>\n
“This team finished in last place last year, and they stayed together. They didn’t leave, and now they’re conference champions and playing in a regional,” Choate said. “I think the story is to stay and be resilient and not just bail when it gets hard.”<\/p>\n
The Cougs returned 19 letter winners from a season ago, and it proved to pay off, including for Max Hartman, who earned first-team all-MWC honors after leading WSU with 116 total bases during the regular season. Hartman also recorded 13 doubles, six home runs, 69 hits and a program single-season record of eight triples, tied for the national lead.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been here for four years, obviously, and this is my favorite group by far,” Hartman said. “Just the fact they all believe in each other so much and that we got this thing turned around is a pretty cool feeling in the locker room and in this building \u2014 to do it with this team.”<\/p>\n
Washington State is headed to a familiar spot this weekend: Eugene, home of the Oregon Ducks.<\/p>\n
The Eugene Regional features the Cougars, Ducks, Oregon State Beavers\u00a0and Yale Bulldogs\u00a0\u2014 with plenty of Pac-12 flavor, past and present.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the No. 3-seeded Cougars face the No. 2-seeded Beavers, while top-seeded Oregon takes on No. 4-seeded Yale.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the winners of Friday\u2019s games will meet, while the losing teams will face off in an elimination game.<\/p>\n
The regional is double-elimination, meaning each team is guaranteed at least two games.<\/p>\n
The Cougars and Beavers open the regional Friday at noon on ESPN+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PULLMAN, Wash. \u2014 Entering the 2026 season, Washington State Cougar baseball was\u00a0doubted heavily. Now, Wazzu is at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,2536,13897,13894,13896,185,13895,13898],"class_list":["post-710528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-local-sports","tag-local-sports-news","tag-spokane","tag-spokane-sports","tag-sports","tag-sports-spokane","tag-wasington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116649182137318300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}