Baseball recruits are returning phone calls to Utah Valley University in greater frequency than perhaps ever before, and for good reason.

It’s been almost an entire month since the Wolverines did what many deemed impossible in defeating Oregon in the NCAA tournament, but there’s many who still remember it. Some of those are top transfer portal candidates from around the country, of which more than several have already committed to play for the up-and-coming Wolverines next season.

” A lot of players are now returning our phone calls and that wasn’t always the case in the past…we’ve had ten portal commits since that Oregon game,” said Utah Valley Coach Nate Rasmussen. “The portal opened the day after we were eliminated, so it’s been good. It’s definitely helped us attract good players from the portal and we feel like we’re ready to advance beyond just being a regional team and get to that next level.”

Indeed Utah Valley’s 6-5 win over the massively-favored Ducks lent Rasmussen’s program a level of visibility and credibility it’s seldom, if ever, enjoyed.

Rasmussen remembers the win well, as do many others.

“It always starts with your players and we had a really good group of guys,” Rasmussen recalled. “We only returned 11 players, so we went through our ups and downs in the season figuring things out, but it sort of really came together for us toward the end.”

Utah Valley’s ups and downs throughout the season were pretty extreme, as it were. Following a torrid start to the season, Rasmussen’s team experienced a pretty severe slump at the end of regular season play, causing them to lose nine of their final 10 contests.

“We tightened up pretty hard, and I’m sure I had a role in that,” Rasmussen explained. “We got excited about winning the regular season title after being picked to finish sixth, but it didn’t work out and we needed to play more loosely, which is how we approached the WAC tournament.”

Utah Valley tore through the WAC tournament, winning five straight, which included a win over No. 1 seed Sacramento State, and a couple of wins over No. 2-seed Abilene Christian to receive the automatic NCAA tournament invite.

With eyes watching around the country, UVU defeated the Ducks 6-5 in a game that was carried live on ESPN before losing consecutive games to Arizona and Cal Poly to end its remarkable run. It’s an achievement any head coach would be proud of, all factors considered, although Rasmussen left the tournament with the feeling his team was capable of even more.

“I still  think we underperformed this past year, and I know that our players do,” Rasmussen said. “We’re obviously happy with how the season ended up…but we feel like we left a lot of meat on the plate in terms of what this program can be.”

The exciting news for UVU baseball is that there’s good reason that the best is yet to come. The team will return 25 players from last year’s team and should add several notable others from the transfer portal.

Although Rasmussen makes a practice of focusing only on just what’s ahead of him, the ultimate goal is to establish UVU as a consistent top performer capable of making even deeper runs in the NCAA tournament. Armed with a new contract that makes him UVU’s head coach through the 2029 season, on top of facilities and support from the Wolverine Athletic department, Rasmussen is very bullish about his team’s future.

“I really feel like the sky’s the limit with what we have in place here at UVU,” Rasmussen said. “You look at Coastal Carolina, which wasn’t a top program 15 years ago and what they’re doing. And there’s many other examples of teams like Coastal Carolina that rise up and really make a lot of noise. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

As for Rasmussen personally, he’s thrilled with the opportunity he has in front of him, although his process involves simply focusing on the task at hand.

“We’re just about work and development daily,” Rasmussen said. “We do not have team meetings talking about goals. We did not have the goal of winning the WAC or any other specific goals. We don’t sit around a room and discuss things to put on a white board. We just work every day to get better…If you just get better every day, and that’s your focus…then the goals will take care of themselves.”

As for what Rasmussen and his team accomplished this past season, on top of the exciting prospects ahead, the goals UVU is set to achieve could very well prove extraordinary.