Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
SEMO showed up for three games in mid-March and swept them all, winning 4-2, 6-0 and 3-2.
Coming off its seventh straight regular-season league crown and an exhilarating trip to the NCAA tourney, the Raiders certainly weren’t expecting to get the baseball equivalent of a pie in the face.
“It was a little bit of a wake-up call — in a good way,” coach Alex Sogard said. “We returned six starters, and there was a little bit of, ‘We’ll just do what we’ve always done.’ Sometimes you’ve got to get knocked down to shake things up.”
Even going a respectable 1-2 against Georgia and Tennessee, their record had dipped to a dreary 5-12.
“Since that weekend, I like how we’ve played. Everybody knew we were better than that. I don’t want to say it was rock bottom. But one of the things we talked about was, early on, I felt like guys were having ‘me’ at-bats instead of team at-bats. They were trying to get theirs — whether it’s a draft-year thing or whatever,” Sogard said.
“When we started playing team baseball and focused on getting on base any way you can, then we started playing well.”
The Raiders won six straight games after the SEMO sweep, including a 10-8 home win over Ohio State.
Their winning streak ended with a 10-7 loss to visiting Oakland in 10 innings Sunday, but they’re 11-13 overall and in first at 5-1 in the league. And they look more than capable of making some noise in the NCAA tourney again.
They upset No. 1 overall seed Vanderbilt and beat East Tennessee State in Nashville last year before getting eliminated from the regional with a 2-2 record.
Shortstop Braylen Blomquist, who was second on the team with a .333 average in 2025, agreed with Sogard about complacency creeping in.
Though the pitching appears considerably better, and the defense is as solid as ever, the Raiders had been lightweights at the plate until their recent surge (62 runs in the last seven games).
They batted .312 and .299 the last two years but currently have a .252 team average.
Blomquist’s 7-of-15 effort against the Grizzlies hiked his average to .250.
“I just tried to relax more and do what I can to help the team — not tense up and not think too much. It’s just see ball, hit ball,” he said.
The Raiders have earned bids in seven of the last 10 NCAA tourneys, which made the clunky start all the more jarring.
But in Blomquist’s mind, a little humility never hurt anyone.
“We got battle-tested early, but not on our home turf. You just have to learn from it: what you did wrong, what you did good and keep on improving,” he said.
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