39-24
West Virginia
46-15
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Runs R | Hits H | Errors E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Virginia | 0 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 19 | 0 |
| Cal Poly | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0 |
Cal Poly Baseball's Historic Season Comes to a Close in Morgantown Super Regional
6/6/2026 3:25:00 PM | Baseball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — After a historic and remarkable Super Regional run full of broken records, team accolades and individual honors, the 2026 Cal Poly baseball season has come to a close just two wins shy of a College World Series appearance.
Larry Lee's 24th campaign as head coach of the Mustangs featured a regular season Big West co-championship, their second straight conference tournament title and Cal Poly's first NCAA Division I regional crown.
Ryan Tayman earned Big West Co-Field Player of the Year honors and was named Most Outstanding Player at the Los Angeles Regional. He tied the school record for home runs in a season and single-season putouts. Third baseman Alejandro Garza's 254 career hits is another record that was broken, along with Nick Bonn's 17 saves for the year.
The postseason run for the Mustangs, however, ended Saturday at Kendrick Family Ballpark as West Virginia clinched its first trip to the College World Series with a 17-1 triumph.
Cal Poly scored the game's first run. After Carson Turnquist worked a scoreless frame in the top of the first, the Mustangs jumped to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the inning as Nate Castellon and Dylan Kordic singled and Tayman's sacrifice fly to right field scored Castellon.
The rest of the game belonged to the host Mountaineers. A 12-2 winner Friday, West Virginia scored in every inning from the second through seventh Saturday and parlayed a 19-hit offensive attack into its 45th victory of the year against just 15 losses.
"We just ran into a real good ball club, multi-faceted, not a good matchup for us and hats off to them. They're good," said Lee. "They do a lot of things very, very well and we just weren't able to hang with them. So hopefully they are successful in Omaha and I think they can be."
Added Tayman, "Give credit to them. They played their butt off for 18 innings, They beat us in basically every facet of the game. They're a really good team and they just played way better than us, bottom line."
Cal Poly came within one victory of its sixth 40-win season in program history, closing out a 39-24 campaign. At 18-16 following their series at Oregon State in mid-April, the Mustangs won 21 of their next 27 games, including the Big West regular season co-championship and Los Angeles Regional title, to earn a trip to the Morgantown Super Regional.
Kordic collected a double and two singles to spark Cal Poly's seven-hit offensive attack. Castellon added two singles for the Mustangs, who hit just .239 in the Super Regional. Kordic was 5-for-8 while Castellon finished three-for-nine. Though he drove in Cal Poly's only run of the game, Tayman's 14-game hitting streak came to an end as the junior catcher went 0-for-2 with a walk and a sacrifice fly.
West Virginia amassed 19 hits, including five home runs, and stole nine bases in the victory. The Mountaineers hit seven home runs in the two games en route to a .418 team batting average.
Cal Poly junior right-hander Carson Turnquist allowed just a single and struck out two in the first frame before West Virginia erased a 1-0 deficit with a seven-run second-inning explosion. Turnquist (9-3) exited the game after allowing six runs.
"He showed us some energy in the first inning before things fell apart," said Tayman. "He had a great year for us and we wouldn't be here without him. I'm very proud of him."
The second-inning Mountaineer rally began with a fly ball down the right-field line that barely touched the chalk on the foul side of the line before bouncing over the fence along the first-base line for a ground-rule double. Another quarter-inch to the right and the inning could have been much different.
Instead, West Virginia parlayed home runs by Ben Lumsden and Tyrus Hall, a single, five stolen bases, three walks and a sacrifice bunt into a seven-run inning, then scored in each of the next five frames as well to win going away. Lumsden finished with three hits, two of them home runs, and five RBIs.
In all, the Mountaineers stole nine bases, walked seven times and hit five home runs to punch their ticket to Omaha next week.
"They create opportunities and they cash in," said Lee. "They did it both games. They swing the bat really well and they run. It's also very difficult to get them to swing and miss. It's probably the fewest swing and misses we've had against us the entire year, They make things difficult.
"When you talk about a team being multifaceted, it's base running, it's the speed, it's the hitting, it's the two-strike hitting, it's the pitching, it's the defense. It's everything," Lee added.
Southpaw Maxx Yehl (9-2) pitched five innings for the win, allowing one run and four hits with one walk and four strikeouts.
The game was delayed 1 hour, 35 minutes by lightning and rain in the eighth inning.
Cal Poly has won 82 games over the last two seasons, claiming back-to-back conference titles for the first time since capturing four straight California Collegiate Athletic Association crowns from 1991-94 and qualifying for consecutive NCAA regionals for the second time in Lee's tenure at Cal Poly.
"This is my message to the players. They've done a lot just to get here and, when you experience those things, hopefully you can get back as soon as possible and learn from the environment, learn from what you need to do to take it one more step," said Lee.
"The ultimate goal is playing in Omaha and obviously we're disappointed," Lee added. "The sting is a little bit deeper, but the only reason why is because you put yourself in this situation. So, hats off to our guys.
"The guys that were here last year and this year, they've won a lot of baseball games. They played in a lot of meaningful contests. They played in two conference tournaments. They played in two regionals and now this ... they add on a Super Regional," Lee said. "So, they have nothing to hang their heads about. They should be proud of what they accomplished and how they represented the team, the school, our community."
"They will look back years from now and they'll be talking about, hey, you know, we played on our first Super Regional team. That's tough to do right now, but that's how you have to look at it."
Cal Poly returned to San Luis Obispo late Saturday night knowing the team played its hearts out for the fans, family, and friends watching them in West Virginia and around the country.
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Team Stats
Pitching:
W: Yehl, Maxx (9-2)
L: Turnquist, Carson (9-3)
Batting:
2B: Kelly, Gavin 1 ; Schoenfeld, Paul 1 ; Graveline, Matthew 1
HR: Guzman, Armani 1 ; Kelly, Gavin 1 ; Lumsden, Ben 2 ; Hall, Tyrus 1
RBI: Guzman, Armani 3 ; Kelly, Gavin 1 ; Schoenfeld, Paul 2 ; Smith, Sean 1 ; Graveline, Matthew 1 ; Lumsden, Ben 5 ; Hall, Tyrus 1
SH: Schoenfeld, Paul 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Guzman, Armani 2 ; Kelly, Gavin 3 ; Schoenfeld, Paul 1 ; Graveline, Matthew 2 ; Ineich, Matt 1 ; Kresser, Brodie 4 ; Lumsden, Ben 2 ; Hall, Tyrus 2
SB: Guzman, Armani 1 ; Schoenfeld, Paul 1 ; Smith, Sean 1 ; Graveline, Matthew 3 ; Ineich, Matt 2 ; Hall, Tyrus 1
HBP: Guzman, Armani 1 ; Ineich, Matt 1
Batting:
2B: Kordic, Dylan 1
RBI: Tayman, Ryan 1
SF: Tayman, Ryan 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Castellon, Nate 1
HBP: Hoiland, Cam 1
