When teams face Texas Tech this year, they’ll be up against one of the best in the country at blasting baseballs out of the park.

Sophomore infielder Jace Jung is a star in the making for the Red Raiders—if he isn’t one already. With major-league scouts breathing down his neck, Tech’s most frequent home-run hitter will have another year of terrorizing opposing rotations at the college level before moving on to doing it professionally.

But teams need more than just one player to be a national champion, and though Tech has plenty of intriguing pieces, it’ll need stars to evolve quickly on its roster if it wants to be the last team standing in Omaha for the first time in school history.

What’s to expect from Tech this season? Check out below a preview of Red Raiders and what they’ll bring to the table against opposing teams this season. 

Hitting

What is there to say about Jung that hasn’t been said already? The reigning Big 12 Player of the Year was an absolute powerhouse as a freshman. His 21 home runs were tops in the league, tied for fourth in America, and played a big part in him winning the NCBWA National Freshman Hitter of the Year award at the end of the year. He’s evolved into a MLB Draft prospect that’s catching plenty of eyeballs among scouts—much like his older brother, Josh, did at Tech before being drafted in the first round by the Texas Rangers—but is back in Lubbock for at least one more season to wreak havoc on opposing rotations.

Elsewhere, junior catcher/infielder Cole Stilwell (.288 avg., eight home runs, 33 RBI) should be another solid returner for the Red Raiders, who rank No. 14 in the D1Baseball Preseason Top 25, but coach Tim Tadlock went down the JUCO and transfer routes to find what could be some studs in the making. One of those is JUCO transfer Zac Vooletich, a junior that played both in and out of the infield and who had a .372 batting average at Navarro CC.

Pitching

This is an area of the diamond where Texas Tech is going to need to prove itself to stay among the elite in the college baseball world, but there is some promise. While the Red Raiders had a decent team ERA (4.30) last season that ranked fourth in the Big 12, all three Tech pitchers that had All-Big 12 recognition at the end of the season—Micah Dallas (Second Team), Ryan Sublette and Patrick Monteverde (Honorable Mention)—didn’t return to Lubbock for 2022. Dallas’ departure especially stings as he transfers to an in-state rival, Texas A&M. Who is there to step up in their absence? 

Regarding experienced returners, right-hander Brandon Birdsell was an 11th-round draft pick by the Minnesota Twins but elected to return to the Red Raiders. He looked promising with a 4-1 record, 3.06 ERA and 36 strikeouts before an injury ended his season in mid-April. But if previous college production is anything to go off, right-handed junior transfer Andrew Morris might be the new star of the show. At Division II Colorado Mesa, Morris was 18-2 with 215 strikeouts in his two-year stint there, winning his conference’s Pitcher of the Year award his final year before leaving to prove his might at the D-I level.

X-Factor

It’s been a sudden yet meteoric rise for the Texas Tech program over the past few seasons. Since the school hired alumnus Tadlock as coach in 2012, he’s led the Red Raiders to four College World Series appearances while last year being a Super Regional win against Stanford away from doing it a fifth time. 

But it’s difficult to break in with the big shots of college baseball, and even then, the Big 12 has its own mini-title drought, as the league hasn’t won a national title in the sport since Texas did in 2005. Take one look at the Red Raiders’ non-conference schedule, however, and it’s clear that they want to get the idea of what it’s like to play (and hope to beat) the nation’s elites throughout the season. 

League/in-state rival and national preseason No. 1 Texas is, of course, on the slate, but so too are the defending national champions (Mississippi State), another top-10 league foe (Oklahoma State, No. 4) and another NCAA Regional winner from last season in No. 22 Dallas Baptist. Behind the talent of one of the nation’s best players in Jung, however, Tech could easily be shooting for the moon this year. Will it find another CWS—or even a first-ever national championship—along the way?