TCU baseball’s first-round College World Series opponent is Oral Roberts. Who are they?

TCU’s first opponent in the 2023 College World Series will be Oral Roberts University. So who are they?

Oral Roberts, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and home to the Golden Eagles, plays in the NCAA Summit League conference, which they won easily. They went 23-1 in conference play and outscored their opponents 250-76.

Heading into their game against the No. 17 Horned Frogs, the unranked Golden Eagles are 51-12 record.

How they got to Omaha

ORU played well the entire season, and they kept that momentum going into the postseason.

Similar to the Frogs, the Golden Eagles swept their conference championship tournament before sweeping the competition in the Stillwater Regional in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

They faced some familiar opponents in Stillwater, including host Oklahoma State, who they beat 6-4 in the opening round. It was the third time they had faced the Cowboys this year and the third time they beat them. They had played them previously in mid-week matchups. ORU won 8-5 when OU was ranked No. 14 and 9-7 when the Cowboys were ranked No. 16.

They defeated Dallas Baptist 6-5 in the regional championship. It was the fourth time the two teams had played each other, but the first time the Golden Eagles came out on top. The Patriots swept ORU in a three-game series in early March.

The win over DBU sent the Golden Eagles to Eugene, Oregon, where they faced the Ducks on their own turf in the best-of-three Super Regional. After building an 8-0 lead, Oral Roberts saw its lead slowly shrink away. Oregon won 9-8, snapping the Golden Eagles’ 21-game winning streak.

The loss snapped a 21-game winning streak ORU carried into the NCAA Super Regional.

The Golden Eagles bounced back and won the next two games, 8-7 and 11-6, to secure the series against Oregon and send them to Omaha for the first time since 1978.

Oral Roberts was the fourth-seeded team in their regional bracket. It’s just the third time since 1999 (when the bracket was expanded to 64 teams) that a fourth-seeded team has made it to the College World Series. Statistically, only 1.1% of four seeds have ever made the final tournament.

Of the other two, Fresno State was the most surprising. The Bulldogs were a four seed in the 2008 tournament and ended up victorious, winning a national championship.

In 2012, Stony Brook University made it to Omaha, but lost their first two games for an early exit.

Horned Frogs vs. Golden Eagles

TCU has squared off with Oral Roberts on the diamond 45 times.

Throughout their series history, the Golden Eagles have gotten the better of the Frogs, with an all-time 26-19 edge.

However, in their last 10 matchups, TCU has beaten ORU eight times.

The Frogs have faced the Golden Eagles six times in the postseason. TCU took the win last year, 3-1, at the NCAA Regional round in College Station. They also won in the regional round hosted by TCU in 2016.

The two teams won one game each when they played each other twice in the 2011 Fort Worth regional, hosted by TCU.

Oral Roberts ended TCU’s season in 2004, beating them twice at the Austin regional.

See how the Frogs and Golden Eagles have played many of them same teams throughout the 2023 season.

Up next

TCU will play ORU in the first round of the College World Series. A familiar face will be in the opposing dugout, this time, as former Horned Frog Sam Thompson transferred to ORU for the 2023 season.

They’ll be in a bracket with LSU and either Tennessee or Southern Mississippi, who will face each other in the first round.

The bracket will be double-elimination and the winner will play the victor of the other bracket (No. 1 Wake Forest vs. No. 8 Stanford/Texas and Florida/Virginia) in a best-of-three final series.