AUBURN, Ala. – Reflecting on a milestone season that featured attendance records, Auburn’s highest national seed, an NCAA regional sweep and the program’s first home super regional, head coach Butch Thompson credited the student-athletes who made it happen.
“This group will forever have a special place in my heart,” he said. “They did things right from day one. They had a good, healthy chip on their shoulder. They cared about Auburn. All of these guys had a single-minded will to restore Auburn baseball to where it should be. I thought they did an amazing job of that.”
During the season, two Tigers lost a parent to illness, with the mother of outfielder Cade Belyeu and the father of pitcher Saxon Roberts both passing away.
“There were some things behind the scenes that only we could see,” Thompson said. “It made it pretty incredible how close we got.”
Thompson, in a Talking Tigers podcast with Voice of the Auburn Tigers Andy Burcham that will post Monday, says he’s juggling mixed emotions in the season’s aftermath: gratitude for a historic year, sadness that it ended two wins shy of Omaha.
“I’m depressed a little bit, I’m thankful at the same time. I wanted something more for them,” said Thompson, who says the 2025 Auburn Tigers stack up well with the nine College World Series teams he’s coached in his career. “This looked like one of those teams. I didn’t get them across the finish line. These players gave us everything.
“This is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, even though it ended the way it did. I believed in this team. I thought they were going to run all the way through and win the whole thing.”
Ten seasons into his Auburn head coaching journey, Thompson sees progress everywhere he looks, from facilities to players earning MLB opportunities to postseason success.
“It’s richer and it’s deeper than it’s ever been since I’ve been here, all the way around,” he said. “I think we’re doing things at an extremely high level.”