Play ball! Things to know entering the NCAA baseball regionals
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The NCAA baseball tournament opens Friday with play in 16 double-elimination regionals.
Regional winners advance to best-of-three super regionals next week, and the final eight go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, beginning June 13.
Who’s hot
Northeastern’s 27-game win streak is the longest in Division I since Fairfield rolled off 28 straight in 2021. The Huskies (48-9) are making their fourth NCAA appearance since 2018 under Mike Glavine, younger brother of Baseball Hall of Fame member Tom Glavine. The Huskies are the No. 2 regional seed in Tallahassee, Florida, and open against Mississippi State.
No. 13 national seed Coastal Carolina (48-11) brings an 18-game streak into its home regional. The Chanticleers swept the Sun Belt regular-season and tournament titles under Kevin Schnall, who took over for longtime coach Gary Gilmore this year. They open against Fairfield.
Columbia (29-17) has won nine in a row and 16 of 17. The Ivy League champions are a No. 4 regional seed and meet No. 16 national seed Southern Mississippi.
Who’s not
Arizona State (35-22) and Kentucky (29-24) each have lost four straight.
The Sun Devils are batting .266 with a total of 12 runs and two homers over their past four and are coming off a 2-0 loss to BYU in the Big 12 Tournament.
The Wildcats lost their final regular-season series against No. 1 national seed Vanderbilt by a total of four runs and then lost 5-1 to Oklahoma in the SEC Tournament.
Still waiting
East Carolina (33-25), which received the American Athletic’s automatic bid by winning the conference tournament as a No. 6 seed, has never reached the College World Series in 34 previous NCAA Tournament appearances, the longest streak of its kind. The Pirates are in the field for the ninth time in 10 years.
Clemson (44-16) has never won a national championship, or finished as runner-up, in 46 previous appearances.
The curse of the No. 1 national seed was finally broken last year when Tennessee won the national championship. Before that, the only No. 1 to win it all was Miami in 1999.
Welcome to the party
Big South Tournament champion USC Upstate, a full Division I member since 2011, is making its tournament debut. The Spartans are second in the nation in scoring at 9.7 runs per game, and Johnny Sweeney is third in RBIs (81) and Scott Campbell is 17th in batting average (.400). They open at No. 11 national seed Clemson, just over an hour southwest of their Spartanburg, South Carolina, campus.
Toughest regional
The Oxford Regional, hosted by Mississippi, gets the nod.
The Rebels earned the No. 10 national seed after winning three games in the SEC Tournament to reach the final, where it lost 3-2 to Vanderbilt. They expect to get back No. 3 starter Mason Nichols and right fielder Ryan Moerman from injury.
Their opponent, Murray State (39-13), is in the tournament for the first time since 2003 after winning the Missouri Valley Tournament. The Racers had a three-run lead against the Rebels in Oxford on March 5 before losing 8-7 in 10 innings.
Georgia Tech (40-17), the No. 2 regional seed, is the first ACC regular-season champion since 1999 to not host. The Yellow Jackets are matched against Western Kentucky (46-12), which set a school record for wins and has the Conference USA player and newcomer of the year in Ryan Wideman and pitcher of the year in Drew Whalen.
No guarantees
Regional hosts have advanced to super regionals 66.8% of the time (267 of 400) since the tournament went to its current format in 1999. Last year, 10 hosts won regionals.
The fewest hosts to advance were seven in 2007 and 2014, eight in 2018 and nine in 2017 and 2023.
Feeling a draft
Eleven projected first-round picks in the Major League Baseball amateur draft are in the tournament, including four of the top six, according to MLB.com analyst Jim Callis.
Heading the group are three left-handed pitchers: Tennessee’s Liam Doyle (2), LSU’s Kade Anderson (3) and Florida State’s Jamie Arnold (5).
Next are Oregon State SS Aiva Arquette (6), Oklahoma RHP Kyson Witherspoon (11), North Carolina C Luke Stevenson (16), Tennessee 2B Gavin Kilen (18), Wake Forest SS Marek Houston (19), Arizona OF Brendan Summerhill (20), Auburn OF-C Ike Irish (21) and Southern Mississippi RHP J.B. Middleton (22).
Duck’s dingers
Oregon center fielder and leadoff man Mason Neville is first in the nation in homers with a school-record 26, and 42 of his 61 hits have gone for extra bases. But Neville enters regionals just 2 for his last 27, and he has gone a season-high five straight games without a homer.
Who is this guy?
The best player you’ve probably never heard of is Northeastern left-handed pitcher Will Jones. The 6-foot-5, 215-pound graduate student is second in the nation with a 1.82 ERA and third in wins with an 11-0 record. He has been part of five of the Huskies’ nation-leading 17 shutouts.
Jones had Tommy John surgery when he was in high school in Southampton, Massachusetts, and didn’t throw a pitch his first two seasons with the Huskies. He threw in 48 innings over 21 appearances, including two starts, in 2023 and ‘24. He has pitched 69 1/3 innings this season with 72 strikeouts, and his 11 wins are a school record.
Geography lesson
California has six teams in regionals, most among the 25 states represented in the tournament.
Cal Poly, Fresno State, Southern California, UC Irvine, UCLA and Saint Mary’s are the Golden State schools that earned bids.
Florida, North Carolina and Texas each has five teams in the tournament and Kentucky has four.
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
By ERIC OLSON
AP Sports Writer
