Florida State baseball’s loss to St. John’s in the opening game of the Tallahassee Regional has put the Seminoles’ season on the brink.
St. John’s scored four runs in the final two innings of the game on Friday, May 29, to stun the No. 10-seeded Seminoles at Dick Howser Stadium.
It’s only the fifth loss in the first game of a regional for FSU since 2003, when the NCAA changed the College World Series format to include a best-of-three championship series for the national title in Omaha, and the 15th time since 1956, the program’s first regional appearance.
FSU was eliminated in the regional round after losing the first game 10 times: 1966, 1968, 1972, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1984, 1985, 2014, and 2018. In four of those regional losses, the Seminoles were eliminated in the first game of the losers’ bracket.
So what happened to the other four teams that lost the first game?
Not only did they go on to win the regional, but that was also the catalyst for eventual trips to the College World Series in Omaha in 1962, 1992, 2008, and 2017.
Is this season’s Seminoles squad capable of replicating that? That will be answered in the losers’ bracket elimination game against Coastal Carolina on Saturday afternoon.
Outfielder Brayden Dowd was on the other side of a team winning a regional after dropping game one, part of a USC team that lost to Oregon State in the 2025 Corvallis Regional. He feels the Seminoles can do the same thing the Beavers and FSU teams of the past have done.
“Sometimes you see the character of a team, the character of your players, when your backs against the wall. You come to this tournament, you know it’s a two-game elimination. We don’t have any wiggle room now, we win, or we go home,” Dowd said after the loss to St. John’s.
“Being at USC last year, I played in the Corvallis Regional, and they [Oregon State] did the same thing we just did, they lost the first game. What I saw out of that team over the course of the regional, and they obviously went on to go play in Omaha, I’m very well aware it’s capable of being done.
What I saw out of that Oregon State team, how well they played, how they played for each other, how their fans rallied behind them, it was incredible. I would say we have a better group here and better fans here.”
The Seminoles have won four or more games in a row five times this season. So the team has the ability to string together wins in a hurry.
With pitchers like Wes Mendes and Trey Beard both available for two of the four games it would take to win the regional, FSU also has the talent on the mound to make a potential charge to the regional final in the eyes of head coach Link Jarrett.
“This can still be achieved. It is very difficult from here, but it can happen. I do think we have the pitching depth to mount and get through this thing,” Jarrett said postgame.
How to watch FSU baseball vs. Coastal Carolina in the Tallahassee Regional
Liam Rooney covers Florida State athletics for the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact him via email at LRooney@gannett.com or on Twitter @__liamrooney.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Can FSU baseball still win the Tallahassee Regional? Here’s what history says
Reporting by Liam Rooney, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
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