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Tyler Fay (Mike Janes/Four Seam Images)

There’s a sense of stability that comes with the second weekend of power conference league play. Plenty will change between now and Selection Monday, but the data is more meaningful now, and conversations about the NCAA Tournament picture begin to carry a different level of significance.

With that stability comes consequence. Lose an ugly series now, and it lingers in a way it didn’t in February, when results were still filtered through the volatility of non-conference play.

The protection of relative obscurity is gone. Getting your bearings is no longer an excuse. This is the point on the calendar when teams begin to build the resume the committee will eventually evaluate, for better or worse, and the moments that tend to stick.

Friday nights set the tone for all of it, not just in outcome but in perception, and Week 6 delivered.

Here are the most important storylines from Friday’s action, along with some early NCAA Tournament implications.

Alabama’s Tyler Fay No-Hits Florida

Tyler Fay needed 132 pitches to complete his outing Friday night against No. 17 Florida, but the Alabama junior righthander never lost control of it. He no-hit the Gators in what stands as the most dominant individual pitching performance of the season to date.

Fay struck out a career-high 13 and finished a game for the first time in his collegiate career. He also recorded just the ninth no-hitter in Alabama history and became the first Crimson Tide pitcher to throw a solo, nine-inning no-hitter since Eddie Owcar in 1942.

There was no denying Fay in Tuscaloosa. His fastball reached 96 mph, and his offspeed pitches played off it, allowing him to record at least one strikeout in seven of nine innings. Florida’s top three hitters—center fielder and top 100 draft prospect Kyle Jones, shortstop and top-ranked hitting prospect in the 2027 college class Brendan Lawson and early-round hopeful corner infielder Ethan Surowiec—combined to go 0-for-9 with five strikeouts. It marked the first time since 1963 that Florida had been no-hit.

“Obviously, (Fay) was locating all of his pitches, changing speeds, throwing the ball on both sides,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “Our guys kept complaining about the strike zone, but I think the umpire did a really good job behind the plate, to be quite honest with you. Certainly, we’ve got to learn from it. We can’t blame an umpire—I know that.”

The result serves as another reminder of Florida’s volatility. At their best, the Gators have looked like a legitimate title contender, pairing offensive firepower with quality starting pitching and bullpen depth. At their worst, they have struggled to resemble a tournament team, losing a series to High Point, dropping their season opener to UAB and now getting embarrassed by Fay.

“We’re going to have to regroup and get them ready to play tomorrow,” O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, it’s disappointing, but it’s one game. But the competitive spirit (left) a lot to be desired tonight.”

No. 13 Southern California, Mason Edwards Dominant Yet Again

An impressive group of scouts gathered behind the plate at the still under-construction Dedeaux Field on Friday night to watch USC ace Mason Edwards make his sixth start of the season.

One exchange stood out: A group of scouts, half-joking but also clearly serious, tried to estimate how many strikeouts the junior lefthander might accumulate this year given USC’s schedule. The number they landed on was, unsurprisingly, massive.

It might not take anything extraordinary for that projection to hold.

Edwards struck out a career-high 12 over six scoreless innings against Washington, his fifth consecutive start with double-digit strikeouts. He lowered his ERA to 0.25 and now has 63 strikeouts over 36 innings. He has allowed one run on seven hits all season.

Yes, all season.

Against the Huskies, Edwards generated 15 whiffs, including six with a fastball that sat 91-93 mph and touched 96, five on a low-80s changeup with notable fade and tumble, three on a low-80s slider and one on a spike curveball that dipped into the mid 70s.

After the game, Edwards told Baseball America he spent the offseason improving his conditioning to add strength and stamina while also refining his pitch design. The work produced what he called a “baby kick-change” and the spike curveball that has given him another look. He throws from an over-the-top slot that has gradually steepened, pairing it with a low leg kick and crossfire delivery that adds deception.

The outing powered USC to a 5-0 win, improving the Trojans to 22-1 overall and 6-1 in Big Ten play.

Level of competition aside, what USC is doing is difficult to ignore. The Trojans have recorded eight shutouts this season, one more than the previous three USC teams combined.

With 33 games remaining, it would take a significant collapse for USC to miss the NCAA Tournament. The more relevant question now is how high the Trojans can climb in the seeding.

No. 4 Auburn Bests No. 2 Texas Thanks To Wild Ninth Inning

Texas controlled 8.1 innings of its marquee matchup opener against No. 4 Auburn. After playing to a 1-1 tie through eight, the Longhorns pushed across two runs in the top of the ninth to take a 3-1 lead.

Then everything unraveled.

Lefty Hayden Leffew opened the inning with a double and a walk. Ethan Walker took over and allowed an infield single to load the bases, then recorded a strikeout to move within two outs of a win. A single to center followed and was not handled cleanly by center fielder Aiden Robbins, who had homered twice earlier in the night, and all three runners came around to score as Auburn walked it off.

It was a chaotic finish to what had been a tightly played, well-pitched game. Texas ace Ruger Riojas delivered 6.1 innings of one-run ball with six strikeouts, while Auburn’s Jake Marciano allowed one run over seven innings and struck out nine. Robbins’ two home runs pushed his season total to eight in just 83 at-bats after he hit six in 204 at-bats at Seton Hall in 2025.

The win puts Auburn in position to climb into the top three nationally. One more victory over the Longhorns would secure the most significant series win of its season to date. Combined with Tuesday’s win over No. 3 Georgia Tech, the Tigers are building one of the strongest weeks in the country.

Positive Performance For Pitt

It’s easiest to impress by winning. It’s still possible to do so without it.

Pitt managed that Friday.

The Panthers didn’t pull off the upset against No. 3 Georgia Tech, but the result was still telling. An 11-9 loss at home is not the ideal outcome, but it is the kind of performance that carries weight. If the rankings are functioning properly, Pitt isn’t expected to beat the third-best team in the country on a Friday. Staying within reach is really what matters here, especially against the best offense in college baseball.

The broader context remains difficult to ignore. Pitt last finished above .500 in conference play in 2021. Its most recent NCAA Tournament appearance came in 1996, when it was still a member of the Big East. In 62 years of Division I baseball, the program has reached the tournament just twice.

Is this the year that changes? It’s too early to say. But this looks like the most credible version of Pitt to make that push in a long time.

A Volunteer Issue

We’ve spent much of the first six weeks noting that one weekend doesn’t define a team in a 50-plus game season. One game certainly shouldn’t either. But some matchups carry more historical weight than others, and Missouri in SEC play has become one of them. 

Missouri has long occupied the bottom tier of the conference, often struggling to reach 10 league wins and, before the SEC Tournament expanded, even to qualify for the field. Since 2021, the Tigers have won just 11 SEC series.

That’s what makes Friday’s 8-4 win over No. 23 Tennessee stand out.

Losing to Missouri comes with context that’s difficult to ignore. Tennessee still has two games to recover and take the series, but failing to do so would carry real consequences. Of the 11 teams Missouri has beaten in a series since the start of the 2021 season, seven have gone on to miss the NCAA Tournament, a result that would mark a significant fall-off for the Volunteers under first-year coach Josh Elander.

Sun Belt Carnage

Friday offered a snapshot of just how unforgiving the Sun Belt can be.

Georgia State knocked off No. 22 Arkansas State, 5-2, in Atlanta, as Tysen Benford worked six innings of one-run ball. Troy followed with a 6-5 win at No. 12 Southern Miss behind a home run and three RBIs from catcher Jimmy Janicki. Texas State added to the chaos with a 4-1 win over surging Louisiana, riding Kyle Froehlich’s 10-strikeout, one-walk performance across seven innings.

The league has already shown itself to be as competitive as it has been in years. That’s a strength, but it also creates a familiar tension when it comes to postseason positioning. The depth is there for the Sun Belt to push beyond the two bids it received last year. The risk is that it turns inward.

Friday leaned toward the latter, even if it’s far too early for a definitive read.

Big West Blunders

It may be time to start worrying about the Big West’s NCAA Tournament outlook. A conference that has consistently produced multiple bids is trending toward a one-bid reality if current trends hold.

UC Santa Barbara, the league’s top contender, fell to 4-3 in conference play Friday after wasting a dominant outing from ace Jackson Flora, who tied a career high with 12 strikeouts over seven shutout innings in a 2-1 loss to Hawaii. UC Irvine, long a model of consistency, dropped a 5-1 decision to No. 15 Oregon State, falling to 9-12 overall.

At this rate, the league’s RPI is unlikely to support multiple bids.

Odds & Ends

• No. 7 Oklahoma evened its series against a scuffling LSU with a 4-2 win, avoiding a loss and setting up a decisive Saturday finale. For the Sooners, it’s a chance to remain in the top 10. For LSU, it’s an opportunity to begin climbing back toward the rankings after a difficult two-week stretch.

• No. 24 Arizona State opened its series at Kansas State with a win in what shapes as a critical Big 12 matchup between two of the league’s top contenders. Sophomore outfielder Landon Hairston continued his strong start, launching his ninth home run of the season.

• Notre Dame ace Jack Radel continued to elevate his draft stock, throwing the program’s first nine-inning shutout since 2021. Radel lowered his ERA to 2.06 over 35 innings while continuing to show intriguing release traits and a power fastball.

Labaron Philon Jr. finished with 29 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, and No. 4 seed Alabama rallied from an early double-digit deficit to beat 13th-seeded Hofstra 90-70 in a first-round game in the Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament on Friday.

The Crimson Tide (24-9) advanced to a second-round matchup against fifth-seeded Texas Tech (23-10), a 20-point winner over 12th-seeded Akron in the earlier first-round game at Benchmark International Arena.

Alabama ended the opening half on a 19-7 run to wipe out a 10-point deficit, then built its own lead to 13 before Hofstra (24-11) mounted one last push for a possible upset.

“We focused on just getting stops and pushing our pace. You know they were trying to slow the game down. You could see that in the second half,” Philon said. “Our pace kind of broke them down a little bit and we just started running.”

Freshman Preston Edmead had 24 points for the Pride, and his 3-point basket pulled the Pride within 67-62 with just over seven minutes remaining. Victory Onuetu’s dunk trimmed Alabama’s lead to 69-64 and ignited much of a crowd of 17,769 that threw its support behind the underdogs.

Philon was simply too much down the stretch, though, delivering a layup and a long 3-pointer during a surge that enabled Alabama to rebuild the lead to double digits. Taylor Bol Bowen put an exclamation point on the Crimson Tide response with two dunks and a 3-pointer as the lead ballooned to 20.

“Hofstra is a team that’s been on a big winning streak,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said. “They came in expecting to win and you could tell that. I think they got frustrated late.”

Alabama played without star guard Aden Holloway, who was suspended indefinitely following an arrest on a felony drug charge. In the absence of the team’s second-leading scorer, Aiden Sherrell, Latrell Wrightsell Jr and Amari Allen stepped up in support of Philon, who had 21 points after halftime.

Hofstra was in the tournament for the first time since 2001, the year after NBA champion and current coach Speedy Claxton helped the school located in Hempstead, New York land a spot in March Madness. The Pride also earned a berth in 2020, but that year’s NCAA Tournament was canceled because of the pandemic.

“Proud of my guys’ effort,” Claxton said. “It’s kind of tough to win a game when you give up 17 offensive rebounds. For a team like us in a tournament like this, we pretty much have to play perfect basketball, and we didn’t do that.”

Taking up the slack

Sherrell had 15 points and 15 rebounds. Wrightsell and Allen each added 11 points.

“I try to get guys involved. I ended up with like seven assists,” Philon said. “I was mainly focused on getting the ball out of my hands when I needed to and getting it back if I needed to.”

Cruz Davis scored 14 points and German Plotnikov had 11 for Hofstra.

Off the mark

Alabama rolled despite missing 13 of its first 16 3-points attempts and going 12 of 36 beyond the arc overall. Philon scored 21 of his 29 in the second half. He finished 10 of 18 from the field, including 3 of 7 on 3-pointers.

Winless

Hofstra fell to 0-5 all-time in the NCAA Tournament. The Pride also lost in the first round in 1976, 1977, 2000 and 2001.

The BYU men’s basketball team could have used Sydney Benally in its NCAA Tournament first-round matchup against Texas Thursday night.

Lee Cummard’s squad was happy she was in Provo and not Portland, though.

Benally tied her career high with 18 points, including four 3-pointers, and set the BYU freshman record for assists in a season in leading the Cougars to a 72-47 win over Alabama A&M at the Marriott Center in the first round of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament.

“I think we came in as a team, just we wanted to prove that we deserve to continue playing in this postseason,” Benally said in a postgame interview on BYU Radio.

“We just have that mentality to just keep playing hard and keep playing for each other.”

With the win, the Cougars (23-11) will host a second-round WBIT game against Missouri next Monday (7 p.m. MDT, ESPN+). The Tigers beat Seton Hall Thursday to advance.

BYU, which was the first team on the outside of the NCAA Tournament bubble, didn’t let the disappointment of missing the NCAAs impact how it started its WBIT opener.

Even though the Cougars hadn’t played for two weeks since a Big 12 tournament quarterfinal loss to TCU, they got out to a 12-4 lead against Alabama A&M and were up 20-13 after one period.

Cummard, BYU’s first-year coach, said he was worried about the psychological aspect of it, having just missed the NCAAs, but his team “was focused” from the jump.

“We just wanted to really come out strong, and I think that now that we’re in this thing, the juices are flowing and we’re ready to go,” Cummard said on BYU Radio.

“They showed that tonight and just the overall effort, (we) did some really good things to start and just kind of kept it going the whole game.”

That start set the tone, as the Cougars outscored the Bulldogs in every quarter, including a combined 36-20 in the second and third quarters as they pulled away.

While it wasn’t a perfect night — for instance, BYU turned the ball over 17 times — the Cougars had the advantage in a majority of categories.

BYU outrebounded the Bulldogs 49-32, shot 46.9% from the field while holding Alabama A&M to 29.6% and doubled up the visitors 8-4 on 3-pointers made.

The Cougars also dominated in fast break points, 16-2.

Benally’s efforts led the way on a night BYU had four players in double-figures. She added five assists, three rebounds and two steals.

“She got us started right from the get-go. She’s always a really decisive passer and makes great passes and did that again tonight,” Cummard said of Benally.

“But the confidence and the assertiveness that she was shooting the 3 ball with tonight really got us going, got her going and just got us off to a great start and (we) rode her for a little bit and then everybody got on board.”

When Benally assisted a Brinley Cannon 3 just 3:24 into the game, she set the freshman assists record, passing Shaylee Gonzales’ former record of 134.

“It’s thanks to my teammates. They get open and they knock down the shot and (it) shows that I’m an unselfish basketball player,” Benally said.

“… I just want anything for the win. I look to see my teammates first.”

With her five assists Thursday, Benally stands at 139 on the year and is primed to add to that total as long as BYU’s postseason run lasts.

The guard also set another freshman record with her 34th start of the season.

“Availability (is) such a huge thing and she’s just been great,” Cummard said, while adding Benally has been playing through injury for most of the season.

“She’s great for the group and I’m glad that she’s done that and she played fantastic tonight.”

In addition to Benally’s record-setting night, senior forward Lara Rohkohl added 13 points, five rebounds, two blocks, an assist and a steal.

Also, guards Delaney Gibb (11 points, eight rebounds, three assists, one block, one steal) and Olivia Hamlin (10 points, eight rebounds, three assists, two steals) made contributions across the board.

Having an extra home game lent itself to a special moment for senior Hattie Ogden as well. After she didn’t score on Senior Night in BYU’s home finale at the end of February, Ogden hit two fourth-quarter 3-pointers, which was met with adulation from the crowd.

Alabama A&M (22-11) was led by Kalia Walker, an HBCU first team All-American. She had 20 points, two rebounds and a steal in the loss.

Now, the focus for BYU turns to Missouri and a rare opportunity to host an SEC team.

“I think just again, (we’re) blessed to continue playing on our home floor, just having the home advantage and having our community come support us,” Benally said.

“Again, we’re just excited to keep on moving in this tournament.”