Tennessee’s Blake Burke, Oklahoma’s Nicole May bring winning from East Bay to NCAA

One’s an imposing freshman in Tennessee who blasts home runs at the frequency of peak Barry Bonds while playing for perhaps college baseball’s best team in the last quarter century.

The other’s an ace pitcher for an absurdly talented Oklahoma softball squad some believe may be the finest collegiate team ever assembled in any sport.

Together, Blake Burke and Nicole May are excelling a couple thousand miles away from the East Bay fields they once dominated, going a combined 154-18 and collecting championships during their high school years at De La Salle and Foothill, respectively.

Now Burke’s Volunteers are the unanimous No. 1 ranked baseball team in the nation with a 56-7 record. They head into this weekend’s Super Regionals as overwhelming favorites after recently winning the school’s first Southeastern Conference title since 1995.

May, meanwhile, is one of three aces who’ve helped the top-ranked Sooners carry a 57-3 mark into the start of Wednesday’s Women’s College World Series final against Texas.

That’s 113 wins and a mere 10 losses combined this season for the former East Bay Athletic League megastars who don’t know each other personally, but have still shared a feeling of near invincibility like no others.

Then again, Burke isn’t paying much attention to talk of Tennessee being almost unbeatable, despite an avalanche of evidence. Growing up in the Contra Costa town of Brentwood, he knows better.

“Not to hate on the Bay Area, but I learned from the Warriors’ 73-9 team that didn’t win the championship that the regular season doesn’t really matter,” Burke said during a phone conversation. “The only way we can finish it off and even be considered one of the best college teams of all time is to win it all.”

Oddsmakers certainly believe in the fun-loving, boisterous Volunteers, who are the overwhelming favorites to win a national title for the first time in the 75-year history of the College World Series. Tennessee (+150) has a healthy betting edge on Stanford, which has the second-best odds (+700).

You want to see offense? The Vols led the nation in both home runs (150) and runs scored (9.4 per game). Amazingly, Tennessee has 10 players with an OPS (on base + slugging percentage) of at least 1.000, including outfielders Jordan Beck and Drew Gilbert, both projected first-round MLB draft picks this summer.

“They’re the best college baseball team I’ve ever seen,” said ESPN analyst Kyle Peterson, a former Stanford star who helped the Cardinal reach the College World Series in 1995 and ’97.

There’s so much hitting talent in Knoxville that Burke’s spectacular freshman season has been overshadowed. And Burke’s statistics have been absolutely jaw-dropping – he’s tied a freshman school record with 14 home runs in just 91 at-bats, meaning the 6-foot-3, 230-pound left-handed hitter has homered every 6.50 at-bats. Bonds, as some Giants fans may recall, averaged a home run every 6.52 at-bats while blasting a record 73 home runs in 2001.

Burke is currently on pace to smash a home run record of his own — Tennessee’s all-time career mark of 38, set by former Rockies star Todd Helton.

Tennessee coach Tony Vitello certainly sees something special when Burke’s at the plate.

“We were just in Starkville (Miss.) and Will Clark is one of the greatest players ever in this league, and I’m not so sure those swings aren’t similar,” Vitello said of the former Giants great from Mississippi State.

Burke’s numbers this season are so ridiculous they read like a video game – his gaudy 1.340 OPS is nearly 150 points higher than any teammate’s, and his slugging percentage of .857 is 130 points higher than any other Vol.

If you don’t believe the numbers, you should have seen some of the 425-foot plus home runs Burke launched while compiling them.

Blake Burke. To the moon. pic.twitter.com/ItxADdmpJC

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) May 29, 2022

Can someone please check the NASA logs for a rocket launch occurring at 12:37 CT?

(This has been certified as a Burke Blast™)

📺 https://t.co/eaAcffkcbh#GBO // #OTH // #BeatUK pic.twitter.com/frUHbhVyYg

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) May 29, 2022

“You want to look at the next great power hitter in college baseball? I think that’s the one right there,” Peterson said of Burke.

Burke, ever the team player, believes it’s been Tennessee’s pitching that’s keyed the team’s stellar season.

True enough, the Vols’ pitching staff led the country with a 2.38 ERA and boasts the likes of projected first-round MLB pick Blade Tidwell and SEC Pitcher of the Year Chase Dollander – neither of whom was the Vols’ Friday night starter during SEC play. That honor went to freshman Chase Burns, who now uses his 100 mph fastball in late-game situations as the closer. And Burns’ fastball isn’t even the team’s most impressive. That distinction goes to Ben Joyce, whose pitches have been clocked over 105 mph.

“I’ve never seen pitching depth like this in college,” Peterson said.

Burke, who was a high school teammate of Giants top pitching prospect Kyle Harrison, still had never faced such an array of talented pitchers until arriving in Knoxville.

“I had to go through a whole fall facing those dudes,” Burke said with a laugh. “I only saw Joyce twice and it looks like a golf ball coming at you. I was lucky to get a little roller to the left side, so I can say I’m 1-for-2 against him.

“Seriously, facing those dudes is a big reason why our hitters have had so much success.”

Like Tennessee, it’s sometimes a bit difficult to say on a given day whether the Oklahoma softball team’s hitting or pitching is more impressive.

A glance up and down the Sooners’ roster reveals an overload of gaudiness as Oklahoma is on pace to set an all-time record for winning, with only rival Texas standing in the way of its second straight NCAA title.

At 57-3, Oklahoma currently has the best single-season winning percentage in college softball history at .950. That would eclipse the University of Arizona’s legendary 1997 team, which had a .924 winning percentage while going 61-5.

Led by record-setting slugger Jocelyn Alo, whose 32 home runs gives her an NCAA career record 120, Oklahoma has outscored its opponents 553-59 this season while 36 of its games have been stopped by the mercy rule.

May, the sophomore from Pleasanton’s Foothill High, has been a large part of the Sooners’ success the past two years, when Oklahoma has gone 113-7. The 5-foot-11 right-hander has teamed with fellow aces Hope Trautwein and Jordy Bahl to lead the NCAA this season with a team ERA of 0.97 and 33 shutouts.

Despite being hampered a bit by a knee injury late last season and earlier this year, May is 15-1 with a sparkling 1.36 ERA. As a freshman a year ago, May went 15-2 and was a factor in Oklahoma’s third title in the past five College World Series.

Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso loves the way May has continued to improve, and they’ll need her to continue to be on her game when the WCWS begins Wednesday.

“Her mindset is much stronger (this year),” Gasso said of May. “Things don’t bleed into her thoughts anymore. I think she used to think a little bit too much or more of pitching not to lose vs. pitching to win. There’s definitely a big difference there.

“Every time she’s on the mound, she just keeps getting better, especially probably the last three weeks or so. She’s been really, really good.”