USC baseball head coach Andy Stankiewicz knows it’s takeoff time for this program in his third year with the Trojans, especially considering the team’s jump in conferences from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten.
“Our whole roster needs to make a jump for us to go and have an impact in year one of the Big Ten,” Stankiewicz said. “We can’t remain the same. That’s not going to help us get where we want to go.”
Stankiewicz’s long term goal is to bring USC baseball back to the College World Series, where it hasn’t been since 1998, when the Trojans won their 12th national championship — the most in NCAA baseball history.
In the meantime, Stankiewicz has to manage playing in the Big Ten for the first time while the team will still play a majority of its games this season at the Irvine Great Park, with some midweek games scheduled for Loyola Marymount University’s Page Stadium while construction on the new Dedeaux Field is finalized this year.
The good news is that Stankiewicz expects that his team will be able to practice at Dedeaux sometime this spring, making their day-to-day travel easier while prepping for a schedule that sees them travel to Houston to play Rice, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, an amount of travel the team would never have experienced in the Big Ten.
But this USC coaching staff and roster know that travel isn’t an excuse. They intend to play up to their full potential no matter where they have to play games, and that was installed in the team’s mindset last season.
After starting off 3-9 in its non-conference schedule last season, USC finished 31-28 overall, including a nine-game winning stretch that saw the team reach the Pac-12 championship game, where the Trojans ultimately fell to Arizona.
Now, after a full year spent playing in the Great Park and Page Stadium in 2024, this USC team should feel more comfortable out of the gate and compete in the Big Ten.
Plus, that end of the year run should give the young core of sophomore players that stepped up last year increased confidence. Infielders Kevin Takeuchi and Dean Carpentier will benefit, plus outfielder Brayden Dowd, who hit his first home run of the year — a clutch three-run homer — in last year’s Pac-12 Tournament semifinals.
“Part of player development is that roller coaster ride sometimes and the growing pains they went through young and early in the year,” Stankiewicz said. “They got better in the end and hopefully year two leads to even more growth.”
Carpentier was one of those freshman players who excelled late in the season. During the Trojans’ nine-game winning streak prior to the Pac-12 championship game, he recorded a hit in all nine games and tallied 12 runs during that span. This season, Carpentier expects to improve upon his successful freshman campaign.
“I kind of picked it up towards the end because of all the things the coaches helped me with, like my swing and pitch location, plus reading and understanding the game a little bit more,” Carpentier said. “I’ve gained some significant strength and size and I’m excited to go out and compete.”
The group of sophomores that played last year will now have to step up as leaders this season due to how the USC roster has changed.
This squad, for the most part, is new and young. The Trojans only have 15 returning players compared to the 25 new members of the team. Plus, only 10 players on the team are upperclassmen, with 17 of the 25 additions being freshmen.
One of the key leaders on this team is senior pitcher Caden Aoki, who’s the only returning starter in the pitching staff. Aoki led the Pac-12 in ERA (2.98) in 2023, but an injury kept him out for part of the 2024 season. After coming back in the middle of the campaign, Aoki finished the year in dominant fashion by taking a no-hitter into the 6th inning of the Pac-12 final .
The upperclassmen and Aoki are setting a precedent for the younger players. He mentioned that it feels weird being one of the oldest players on the team, but also fun at the same time, with some of the younger players calling him “unc,” short for uncle.
Aoki was the first transfer of the Stankiewicz era after coming over after his freshman season at Notre Dame. Now, the whole roster is composed of players that Stankiewicz and his staff recruited.
“It takes a different amount of time to get to know every single person through team bonding,” Aoki said. “I think this team did that pretty early and that’s something that’s really special. Every single one of us are friends, and that’s really hard as a team to do.”
In the rotation, Aoki could be followed by junior Michael Ebner, who was an all-star in the Cape Cod League this summer, and junior transfer Caden Hunter from Sierra College.
The USC lineup only hit 35 home runs as a team last year and are looking for more thump, but don’t want to sell out for power. UNLV graduate outfielder transfer Kade Higgins should add some pop after hitting seven home runs and slugging .515 last season.
They’re also missing some speed at the top of the lineup after the Baltimore Orioles took Austin Overn in the third round of the MLB Draft last year. Overn had 33 stolen bases in two seasons with the Trojans.
Look for Dowd to become that table setter the offense needs. In 145 at-bats, Dowd hit .324 and stole eight bases, so his running ability should come into play more this season.
One more position that USC doesn’t have a clear starter at is catcher. Jacob Galloway transferred to No. 1 Texas A&M, leaving USC with no catcher on the roster who had taken a Division I at-bat besides sophomore Andrew Lamb, who ended up playing in the outfield in all of his 24 games last season. Besides Lamb, Riverside Community College transfer Richard Tejada and freshmen Augie Lopez, John Elliot and Kaden Stone will also be given a chance to catch.
Different publications have USC ranked all over the place in preseason polling, with Baseball America saying the Trojans will be one of the last four teams to make a regional and D1 Baseball predicting USC will finish 10th in the Big Ten.
USC baseball is aiming to be one of the best 64 teams in NCAA baseball and capture a regional spot this season. With many younger players ready to take bigger roles, this team has high potential in its first season in the Big Ten.