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The Florida Gators are on their way to the College World Series finals after taking down TCU, 3-2, on Wednesday. That win was the team’s eighth straight victory in the NCAA Tournament dating back to the Regional round.
The winning streak is the longest active mark in college baseball’s postseason after Wake Forest fell to LSU in its most recent matchup. Prior, the Demon Deacons sat at seven straight wins.
But what’s the longest NCAA Tournament winning streak in college baseball history? The record might surprise you.
That mark extends across three seasons, spanning a total of nearly two dozen contests.
Between the 2010 and 2012 seasons, the South Carolina Gamecocks were the sport’s premiere team. In that time, the program played for three national championships, winning two titles in ’10 and ’11.
That included a 22-game winning streak that still stands as the top mark.
The streak started in that ’10 season after the Gamecocks reached the College World Series. The team suffered an opening day loss at the hands Oklahoma before ripping off six straight wins to win the program’s first title.
.@GamecockBasebll‘s @WhitMerrifield delivered one of the biggest hits in #CWS history 🏆
2010 CWS Finals: South Carolina vs. UCLA airs at 7 PM ET! pic.twitter.com/b8kBqfBEWn
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) May 7, 2020
The momentum continued the next year as South Carolina went a perfect 10-0 in NCAA Tournament play, sweeping through the Regional, Super Regional, and CWS on their way to back-to-back championships.
The program entered the postseason in 2012 with the streak at 16 games, and they’d again sweep through the Regional and Super Regional rounds before finally falling in Game 2 of the College World Series to Arkansas by a score of 2-1.
The loss ended the impressive run at 22 games.
The Gamecocks would overcome that loss to make a third straight championship series before being swept at the hands of Arizona.
South Carolina also hold the record for consecutive College World Series wins with 12 in a row.
Which teams have come close?
As of now, the streak has not come close to being touched. Why is that?
The 2011 Gamecocks were the first team to go a perfect 10-0 in the postseason. That season helped the program bridge the 2010 and 2012 campaigns.
South Carolina is also the sport’s last back-to-back champion, which is almost essential if you want to beat the mark.
While the 22-game streak might never be touched, some have come close to besting the 12-game College World Series run.
Southern Cal won five consecutive titles between 1970-1974, which is a record for the sport. The Trojans won 10 straight CWS games between the 1972-1974 seasons, sweeping through the field in Omaha in 1973.
We’ll see if Florida can come close to matching either of these records previously set by their SEC rival. To do so, they’ll first need to sweep through the finals against either Wake Forest or LSU.