USC baseball, despite winning NCAA regional, still has much to prove

USC baseball played a high-quality regional in College Station, Texas. The Trojans scored a ton and pitched consistently well, beating Texas A&M twice on the road to advance to the super regionals. North Carolina is next for the Trojans, but USA TODAY Sports writer Kevin Skiver isn’t fully convinced about the Men of Troy for a simple reason:

“A Los Angeles Big Ten team made it out of regionals, just not the No. 1 seed. The knock against USC was how terrible the Trojans were against good teams, but they beat Texas A&M twice to make it out of College Station. Jack Basseer looks like a star while Augie Lopez brings some thump to the order. This is a USC team build for the tournament, with Mason Edwards and Grant Govel providing one of the country’s tougher Friday-Saturday starting duos. The only reason they aren’t ranked higher is because it takes more than one weekend to beat (a) 1-11 record against Quad 1,” Skiver wrote.

USC had one great weekend, but analysts see it as an outlier more than an indicator. The Trojans will simply have to go to North Carolina and prove they are more than a one-weekend wonder against high-ranked opponents. Proving the doubters wrong also means punching a ticket to Omaha for the College World Series. There is so much for USC to prove — and achieve — this coming weekend in Chapel Hill.

Motivation will not be hard to come by for the Trojans. They’re coming to North Carolina as a confident team, but there’s still reason to play with a chip on the shoulder.

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: USC baseball must prove it can stack together two winning weekends