Utah Valley to face No. 12 Oregon in first NCAA regional in 9 years

OREM — Landon Frei knows a thing or two about Oregon.

The former 4A state champion at Snow Canyon spent three seasons at Utah, where he started 115 of 129 games and earned All-Pac 12 honorable mention honors as a freshman with a .330 batting average.

But after transferring to Utah Valley for his final season of college baseball, the former 4A state playoff MVP will get another look at the Ducks.

Back in the NCAA regional for the first time in nine years after winning the Western Athletic Conference Tournament, the Wolverines travel to the Eugene regional to face the 12th-seeded Ducks beginning Friday (12 p.m. MDT, ESPN+). Big West champion Cal Poly and Big 12 Tournament champion Arizona also make up the four-team regional.

But for Frei and Utah Valley, the focus is on Oregon, which isn't hard for him and the former Pac-12 foe.

"They're tough, and they're going to rake, too," Frei said. "They bring the bats like us. I think it will be a good challenge for our pitchers."

There's no better way to round out a senior year for Frei, who hit .294 with 16 home runs in his lone season in Orem after a total of five in three years with the Utes.

Frei owes much of that improvement to Utah Valley first-year coach Nate Rasmussen, who called the former Snow Canyon slugger while he was in the portal — and playing summer ball in New Jersey — with a detailed hitting plan about how he would turn a .284 batter with three extra-base hits and one homer a year ago into an outside-the-park threat in one year.

"I was sold, instantly," Frei said. "Obviously, it paid off. ... It worked out."

It's only the second time since the university moved to Division I in 2003 that Utah Valley has advanced to an NCAA regional, and the first since the Wolverines were in the Baton Rouge regional in 2016.

But Utah Valley isn't just happy to be there. They know that Cal Poly is one of the hottest teams in the country with a 41-17 record, including wins in 13 of the last 15 games, and Arizona is a 39-win team that just beat BYU, TCU and Big 12 regular-season champion West Virginia in the league tournament.

That's in addition to the Big Ten regular season champs with a 42-14 record that includes a 22-8 mark inside PK Park.

"They definitely don't want to go there to hang out and sightsee," Rasmussen said. "They want to win some baseball games."

The Wolverines don't just represent the university or the WAC, they'll also carry the state of Utah on their shoulders as the only team from the Beehive State in the tournament with nine Utah natives on the roster and a first-year head coach who starred at Bingham High before a career at Puget Sound, Pacific and Northern Colorado prior to joining the Utah Valley staff in 2021.

"I've always thought Utah was a gold mine for baseball," said Luke Iverson, the junior leadoff hitter who prepped at Pine View. "It's always been kind of underrated. But I definitely think we're putting Utah on the map as a baseball mecca."

Utah Valley started the year strong before hitting a slump, losing 16 of 20 in the middle of the year.

But the Wolverines regrouped to win four games in four days as the No. 3 seed at the WAC Tournament, and have momentum back on their side before the program's biggest weekend in nine years.

"I think we're at that point where we're really hitting our stride and playing our best baseball," Iverson said. "We're really playing loose and everyone is playing free."

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