Coastal Carolina Baseball Preview:
The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers come into 2026 after an outstanding 2025 season, where they finished as a runner-up in the College World Series finals. The Coastal Carolina head coach, Kevin Schnall, returns for his second season and will have high expectations after what he and the team accomplished in 2025. Schnall set records: Most wins in Division One history for a first-year coach, and was the 2025 National Coach of the Year. In the Baseball America top 25 rankings, Coastal Carolina starts the season at #11. They will have a stout pitching staff, but lost a couple of key pieces to the MLB Draft.
Who returns:
The major strength of Coastal Carolina will be their pitching staff. For the starting rotation, it is going to be hard to find a better pitcher in the country than Cameron Flukey. In his sophomore season, he threw over 101 innings, had 118 strikeouts, and a 3.19 ERA. Flukey is an RHP whose fastball gets up to 98. He has power and the stuff behind the power with a nasty curveball that produced an almost 50% whiff rate. He also has a fantastic changeup and slider to pair with the fastball and curve. They also return LHP Hayden Johnson, who is a great number 2 guy behind Flukey. The bullpen will be established with players returning that include Ryan Lynch, Darin Horn, and Dominick Carbone. As for the offense, 1B Colby Thorndyke returns after hitting over .300 with 48 RBIs. Coastal Carolina has the opportunity to make some noise yet again on the road to Omaha.
Key Departures loom large:
Coastal Carolina will have to replace possibly the best defensive catcher and a key starting position player in Caden Bodine. After his fantastic season, he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays. Bodine was one of the best in the country at stealing strikes and framing pitches, which is a major factor in close games. Right-handed pitcher Jacob Morrison, previously the staff ace, is also a big loss. He was the 2025 Division 1 Pitcher of the Year. If you watched the College World Series game against Oregon State, you would see how big an impact he had as a starter.
What does this season hold?
Coastal Carolina has another opportunity to make some major noise during the season and get to Omaha for the second year in a row. They have the pitching staff to keep offenses off the board, and they have the offensive aggressiveness to steal runs and make life easier on their pitchers. The opportunity is there, barring injuries, to bring home another CWS title back to Conway for the first time since 2016.
