OMAHA, Neb. -- Dan Tauken doesn't have any NIL deals, and didn't expect many perks playing baseball for Murray State. The Racers outfielder yearned for just one thing: cup holders.

Murray State bused everywhere from its campus in Kentucky during the 2025 regular season, including a nearly seven-hour one-way trip to Valparaiso in Indiana. The team is constantly on the go, eating a lot of Jimmy John's and Panda Express in the bus with nowhere to put their drinks.

Until now. On Wednesday, Tauken and his teammates awoke to a surprise -- a private jet was whisking them to Omaha for the mid-major program's first trip to the Men's College World Series. The players had their own aisles to spread out on, Tauken said, and snacks were doled out every 30 minutes. Best of all, every seat had a cup holder.

"It was awesome," Tauken said. "We finally felt like people are acknowledging the work we've been putting in, and it feels good."

Murray State's improbable postseason run continues when it plays No. 15 UCLA on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET (ESPN) in the first round of the MCWS. The Racers are just the fourth regional 4-seed to make it to Omaha since the postseason field expanded in 1999 -- it's the equivalent of a 13-to-16-seed reaching the Elite Eight of the NCAA basketball tournament.

The Racers are the epitome of the have-nots of college baseball. Murray State plays in an 800-seat stadium with giant holes in the outfield walls and a washed-out old scoreboard, and there's a Lowe's sitting in the backdrop.

The players are in charge of tarp duty. Some days, they have to lay the tarp down and roll it up multiple times.

"When we take the tarp off, it's always a river in right field," Tauken said. "And during the season against Southern Illinois, the outfield was basically a pool and we had to play because it was a conference series.

"So every step you took, the water would splash up and it was kind of fun. I mean, it was a little bit dangerous, but it was fun."

So how have the Racers been able to go where many much larger-budgeted programs haven't?

Baseball is all about momentum, coach Dan Skirka said. The Racers won the Missouri Valley Conference tournament -- the MVC is a good league, he insists, despite its lone NCAA regional bid -- and then received what they saw as a favorable draw at No. 10 Ole Miss.

They'd beaten the Rebels last year in 15 innings and played them close this season in a 10-inning loss in Oxford, Mississippi. The familiarity allowed the Racers to avoid being intimidated by the 11,000-plus Ole Miss fans and to rally after getting hammered by the Rebels 19-8 in the double-elimination regional.

Baseball, Skirka said, is also about people and relationships.

"They're just great kids," he said. "They don't focus on what we don't have. They just get to work. They love to play, they love to compete with each other, and it just goes a long way.

"Just getting to work and developing and getting better. And when we got a chance to compete, they competed, and sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. But they kept developing, and obviously they've gotten hot here in the postseason, and they rode it."

The Racers ended up beating Ole Miss 12-11 to advance to the supers, then took down Duke in the Durham Super Regional. 

Outfielder Jonathan Hogart stood in a hallway at Charles Schwab Field on Thursday as players and coaches of some of the powerhouses in college baseball passed by, and in some ways it still didn't seem real. Hogart is grounded enough to say that he doesn't pay attention to the logos on the uniforms, and confident enough to say that he believes his team can do anything.

But he'll also concede that if someone told him in January that this is where they'd be in mid-June, he wouldn't have believed it.

"Absolutely not," he said. "It's always a dream."

He has sat on his couch this time of year, watching the MCWS, and thought the players "looked like celebrities on TV."

"It takes a lot of luck and a lot of grit," he said. "And also a really talented team, which we have."

After the Racers landed at Eppley Airfield, Skirka took them to Charles Schwab Field. Skirka said walking into the 24,000-seat stadium was an "out-of-body experience" -- that's 23,200 more seats than he's used to.

He didn't say anything when they walked through the stadium Wednesday. Skirka just wanted the players to see the Murray State banner and soak everything in. His 9-year-old son, Keegan, was standing beside him.

"This is pretty cool, Dad," Keegan told him.

Tauken walked off the field Thursday and was stopped in the tunnel by autograph seekers. He caught himself looking around the stadium a few times, but make no mistake -- Tauken's feet will be on the ground Saturday, and notably dry.

"They do take care of the puddles," he said.