OMAHA, NE ― Don’t tell the teams in the 2025 College World Series that paying transfer portal prospects top dollar in NIL money is necessary to be here.
Yes, there are a few of those teams in Omaha, most notably Arkansas and LSU. But the other teams — Coastal Carolina, Arizona, Louisville, UCLA, Murray State and Oregon State — weren’t exactly writing blank checks.
Those teams were built in different ways. Transfers make up the majority of Arkansas’ top contributors, but LSU’s roster has a combination of top-ranked transfers and former blue-chip high-school recruits. Oregon State, Louisville and Coastal Carolina have focused mostly on identifying and developing players out of high school. Arizona and Murray State excelled at finding players out of the junior college ranks.
And then there’s UCLA, which will face off against LSU in a winners bracket game on June 16 (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Charles Schwab Field for a spot in the semifinals. The 2013 national champions had fallen on hard times. The Bruins hadn’t been to Omaha since that national title and failed to qualify for a regional altogether in 2023 and 2024. UCLA had the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class in 2023, and those players played a lot as freshmen, but a year ago the strategy didn’t seem to be working out.
But the Bruins stuck with it. Going into the 2024 season, they took just two transfers — pitchers Ian May from Cal and August Souza from Santa Clara. Only one other player on the roster was a transfer: outfielder AJ Salgado, who transferred from Division II Cal State Los Angeles before the 2023 season and has spent the last three seasons with the Bruins.
But in 2025, the blue-chip talent on the roster began to come through. Despite a rough season in 2024, the team’s impending move to the Big Ten and the fact that several UCLA players had transferred to the SEC in past seasons, 14 of the 16-member 2023 recruiting class stayed with the Bruins. The two who did not both went to junior colleges.
The crown jewel of that class was Roch Cholowsky, who hit .308 with eight home runs as a freshman but exploded for .367 and 23 home runs as a sophomore. Cholowsky was named the Big Ten Player of the Year and a Dick Howser Trophy finalist.
Cholowsky isn’t the only one. Seven of UCLA’s nine starters in its College World Series-opening win over Murray State were part of that sophomore class. Dean West and Phoenix Call each had two hits; Roman Martin had two RBIs.
‘Really the last couple of years, the last thing you want to be is young in college baseball, college football, college basketball,’ Bruins coach John Savage said in UCLA’s pre-Omaha press conference on June 12. ‘That model used to work. But that model doesn’t work as many freshmen as we had. So, now if they turn into super sophomores, like we have now. Then you wore it last year and now you come back and it’s paid off. But some people don’t have patience.
‘But to our credit our kids have stayed together. They believe in one another. They’re really good players. And there’s a lot of future high prospects on our team other than Roch.’
The Tigers, who defeated Arkansas in their opening game, are an example of a perfect transfer portal strategy. They brought in several impact players in the offseason, including pitchers Anthony Eyanson and Zac Cowan, and second baseman Daniel Dickinson. But LSU, too, has plenty of contribution from its own recruits like ace pitcher Kade Anderson, first baseman Jared Jones, outfielder Derek Curiel and reliever Casan Evans.
But in an era in which outsiders increasingly see a roster-building strategy like LSU’s as a necessity to win championships, teams such as UCLA with throwback strategies are looking to buck that trend.
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.