In the summer of 2021, USC baseball's director of player development, Josh Goossen-Brown, was coaching at a junior college in Los Angeles when a lanky, left-handed pitcher walked in asking for lessons. The kid had just finished his sophomore year of high school and was determined to improve. But with a fastball stuck in the mid-70s, he didn't exactly look like a future star—or even a surefire college recruit.

Fast forward five years, and that kid—USC junior pitcher Mason Edwards—is almost unrecognizable. He has transformed into one of the most dominant arms in college baseball and is now projected as a likely first-round pick in the upcoming MLB draft. It's a rise that's been anything but ordinary.

"When I start hearing projections for the draft and everything, I'm just like, 'Damn, it's pretty surreal just to think about how it started, where he's been and what he's accomplished,'" Goossen-Brown said.

Edwards wasn't a regular on the showcase circuit, and top schools didn't come calling until late in his high school career. Even during his first two seasons at USC, he showed flashes of potential but couldn't quite sustain it. Last summer, instead of heading to the prestigious Cape Cod League, he chose to train at home. The decision has paid off in spectacular fashion.

Through 12 starts this season, Edwards is a perfect 7-0 with a microscopic 1.74 ERA. He leads the nation in strikeouts with 132 over just 72⅓ innings. Last week, he set a new Big Ten single-season strikeout record with 101 in conference play alone. Those numbers are the payoff of a development story years in the making.

As his velocity began climbing out of the 70s heading into his junior year of high school, Edwards started to believe he had a real future in baseball. After all, there's always a demand for left-handed pitching.

"I knew I kind of had a golden ticket in my hand in high school," he said. "I was like, 'What if I work hard and make something of this?'"

So he did. His velocity jumped from 82-83 mph early in his junior year to 87-88 mph by the end. The biggest milestone came that summer during a bullpen session with Goossen-Brown. With a camera rolling, Edwards hit 90 mph for the first time. It was the moment everything started to click—and a sign of the superstar he was about to become.