It’s been nearly a week since then-No. 1 UCLA baseball was eliminated in its own NCAA regional.

People, many of whom have doubted the Bruins’ legitimacy all year long, feel like they’ve been proven right.

And others just like the chaos of a No. 1 overall seed falling short.

But an NCAA title just can’t be the binary litmus test of any given program. Sports, especially baseball, are loved for their parity, not logic or certainty.

Winning a national title is the goal for any program in any given season, but there are more than 300 Division I baseball programs – to say that success is defined purely by winning the last game in Omaha, and that the remaining 300-plus programs all had a failed season is asinine.

While coach John Savage, like almost every coach, will be quick to dismiss rankings, he has not been afraid to point to his 2023 No. 1 recruiting class as the sparkplug for his program’s recent rise.

But recruiting rankings don’t always have a one-to-one correlation with wins.

The 2024 team infamously featured both Baseball America’s No. 1 2021 recruiting class and 2023 recruiting class, only to go 19-33 as one of two teams in the Pac-12 to not make the conference tournament.

High school recruiting estimates are far from an exact science, but the Bruins’ headliner in that 2023 class has been everything he was advertised to be and more.

Yes, Roch Cholowsky went 2-for-12 in this year’s tournament with as many strikeouts as hits.

Yes, the junior shortstop will finish his collegiate career slashing .234/.273/.234 across 11 NCAA tournament affairs and 55 plate appearances.

But the potential first-overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft still put up a .329/.448/.624 slashline with 52 homers and 167 RBIs across 178 games – starting every game UCLA played over his three seasons in Westwood.

Besides the statistical accolades, Cholowsky’s biggest collegiate feat may be the culture and character he brought to Westwood.

The Bruins didn’t lose any significant talent after their dreadful 2024 campaign or surprise 2025 run.

At a time when there seemingly has never been more dollars pulling players to bigger and better programs with stadiums and crowds that dwarf the less-than 2,000 Jackie Robinson Stadium can hold, the Bruins stuck together and benefited from it.

The Bruins’ 2026 team was a blend of home-grown talent and a few blue-chip transfers that’s rarely seen in collegiate sports anymore – and it still worked.

After its worst season since 2005 and getting kicked from its home ballpark for a month in September 2024 over a legal dispute, UCLA went 100-26, won two Big Ten regular season titles, a Big Ten tournament, hosted two NCAA regionals, a super regional, made the Men’s College World Series for the first time since 2013 and became the first team in baseball to ever go the entire regular season as the sports’ No. 1 team.

No, UCLA’s NCAA title count will remain at one, but the best team isn’t always the one that wins the national title – that’s an entirely new game in itself.

The 2009 team, which featured 2011 first-overall and third-overall picks Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, as well as Brandon Crawford, Rob Rasmussen and Cody Decker, finished two games below .500.

After getting swept by South Carolina in the MCWS final in 2010, the 2011 team – again headlined by Cole and Bauer – was ranked No. 1 in preseason polls only to be eliminated in its own regional.

Cole lost game one to San Francisco 3-0 in the regional opener, and eventual big-leaguer Zack Weiss fell in the regional finals to UC Irvine 4-3.

UCLA was the No. 1 overall seed in 2015 but was eliminated in the Los Angeles Regional, both of its losses coming against a Maryland team that wouldn’t reach Omaha.

The 2019 team was also the No. 1 overall seed in its NCAA tournament, but UCLA – then-featuring Michael Toglia, Matt McLain, Garrett Mitchell, Chase Strumpf, Ryan Garcia and Nick Nastrini – fell to Michigan in the LA Super Regional in three games.

UCLA’s national title-winning team came in 2013, and its highest profile players were arguably David Berg and Adam Plutko, taken in the sixth and 11th rounds of the MLB Draft, respectively.

It’s disappointing when you look at a team that made the MCWS after hosting regionals and super regionals last season and became the first team to play an entire regular season as the No. 1 team in baseball play three NCAA tournament games.

But if you look at what UCLA did, rather than not do – recruit, develop, compete, put the program back on the map and give itself a real chance at a title – then I don’t think the past season, or past three, can be so easily tossed into the trash.