If you’ve been an avid reader of the Daily Trojan sports section during the Bennett Christofferson era, this article’s headline may seem familiar. Back in October, my then-co-editor Sean Campbell wrote a column titled “Is soccer back?”, outlining reasons why a flatlining USC soccer team would make a resurgence after a rough stretch of losses.

Sean is an incredibly talented writer — which is fortunate, because I don’t think he has any future as a fortune teller. The Trojans didn’t win a single match for the rest of their season, barely making the Big Ten Tournament as the last team in before getting bounced in their first-round matchup with Northwestern and missing the NCAA Tournament field altogether.

“Is soccer back?” Well, maybe it was at the time, but running that headline appeared to put a jinx on USC that it simply couldn’t recover from.

I tell you all of this, dear reader, in a potentially misguided attempt to save USC baseball from the same fate. By acknowledging the jinx potential of naming an article “Is baseball back?”, I hereby cancel out the jinx with a jinx of my own. Like that one episode of Regular Show.

Anyways! 200 words of somewhat-irrelevant buildup is more than enough. Here’s the point: Trojan baseball is having a really, really good start to the season.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about my dreams of USC returning to its rightful place at the top of the collegiate baseball world, ending decades of good-but-not-greatness that saw arguably our greatest all-time athletic program — yes, that includes football — fall to the wayside in the eyes of most Trojan fans.

I know we’re only seven games into the season, and our opponents during that span haven’t exactly been titans of the sport … but man, what a seven games it’s been.

The obvious highlight is the pitching, which has been nearly — and in some cases, literally — unhittable. As a team, USC is averaging fewer than two runs allowed per game, including two shutouts in its first five matchups; for reference, last year’s squad didn’t get its second shutout until game 44.

The big three of the starting rotation — junior Mason Edwards, sophomore Grant Govel and sophomore Andrew Johnson — have combined to allow one run in 33 innings. Edwards and Govel, in particular, have given up just one hit each and are the only two Big Ten pitchers so far with 20 or more strikeouts.

When I covered the opening series against Pepperdine, Johnson told me the three of them were “really close” and constantly push each other to improve. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.

That’s not to say that pitching is the Trojans’ only strength, though admittedly, the offense has been inconsistent at best. USC has scored eight or more runs three times already, including two walk-off run-rule victories in its first four games, but the bats were fairly cold in last weekend’s series against Rice, hitting just 0.214 as a team.

Part of the issue is the Trojans’ “Moneyball” (2011) mentality of “he gets on base” — they’re averaging nearly as many walks and hit by pitches per game as they are actual hits. That’s an impressive stat in terms of plate discipline, but it’s less conducive to actually scoring runs and more so to leaving runners on base every inning, something they’ve already done a lot of.

But, I digress. It’s a bit unfair to dog on a lineup that, at least on an individual level, has been doing quite well. Junior outfielder Kevin Takeuchi has emerged as USC’s best hitter through the first seven games, leading all qualified Trojans with a 0.450/0.571/0.600 slash line. And nine hits. And 12 total bases. And four stolen bases. And six walks. He leads in most categories you can think of, really.

Junior infielder Abbrie Covarrubias, whom I referred to as “our glorious king” in my previous column, has put up similar numbers as well. Though he hasn’t hit for much power — or any, really, with no extra-base hits in 23 at-bats — he’s tied with Takeuchi for the lead in both hits and walks and has been a maniac on the basepaths, scoring a team-high 11 runs and rocking a perfect 4-for-4 mark on steal attempts.

Yet our actual best hitter might be senior outfielder Jack Basseer, who makes a case for a permanent spot in the starting lineup every time he’s on the field. He only played one game in each series, but small sample size be damned: He’s the only Trojan with multiple home runs and ranks second in total bases despite getting half the at-bats of every player near him on the leaderboard.

It’s important to take these early results with a grain of salt. NCAA baseball schedules consist of 56 games — much to the horror of the Daily Trojan copy staff — meaning we’ve only seen an eighth of the season, and none of the more difficult competition to come. Anything could change down the stretch.

But for right now, there’s a whole lot to be excited about with USC baseball. If the rotation can stay as dominant as it’s been and the offense trends closer to 14 runs than three, we may very well see the Trojans make a return to the NCAA Tournament field … and, hopefully, a much deeper run than last season.

“Is baseball back?” For right now, it certainly is. Let’s just hope Sean didn’t pass the same curse onto me — a 7-49 finish might get us relegated to Division II.

Bennett Christofferson is a junior writing about baseball’s biggest stories and controversies in his column, “Dugout Diaries,” which runs every other Thursday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.