With just a couple of weeks remaining in the college baseball regular season, fans are no doubt beginning to ponder how their favorite team’s path to Omaha might be shaping up. The easiest route, of course, involves being one of the top eight seeds that guarantees regional and super regional hosting rights. It is therefore advantageous if your team happens to be in the upper tier of the SEC standings or very high in the ACC hierarchy.
As of now, we project six of the top eight seeds to go to SEC members, with a couple more also slated to host regionals. Texas holds the top seed, but projected No. 2 Arkansas, seeking the program’s first national title, closed the gap with a sweep of the Longhorns last weekend.
The ACC should be well represented as well with three likely hosts among the top 16 teams. National contenders from the west coast are harder to find, but there should be at least three regionals in the Pacific time zone.
So who will occupy those spots and the rest of the field of 64 when it is revealed? Here’s our NCAA baseball tournament bracket projection with less than three weeks to go before Memorial Day:
(* denotes teams that are automatic qualifiers based on current conference standings.)
Austin region
Texas* (1)
Texas-San Antonio*
Xavier
SIU-Edwardsville*
Fayetteville region
Arkansas (2)
Duke
Northeastern*
Central Connecticut State*
Tallahassee region
Florida State* (3)
Florida
Kansas
Bethune-Cookman*
Athens region
Georgia (4)
Miami (Fla.)
Troy
Sacramento State*
Baton Rouge region
LSU (5)
Southern Mississippi
Texas Rio Grande Valley
Missouri State*
Clemson region
Clemson (6)
Dallas Baptist*
Texas A&M
Holy Cross*
Auburn region
Auburn (7)
Georgia Tech
Connecticut
Kent State*
Knoxville region
Tennessee (8)
Louisville
Cal Poly
Bryant*
Chapel Hill region
North Carolina (9)
Mississippi
East Tennessee State*
George Mason*
Nashville region
Vanderbilt (10)
Wake Forest
Southeastern Louisiana*
Oral Roberts*
Morgantown region
West Virginia* (11)
North Carolina State
Mississippi State
Austin Peay*
Corvallis region
Oregon State (12)
Southern California
Arizona State
San Diego*
Myrtle Beach region
Coastal Carolina* (13)
Alabama
Kansas State
High Point*
Los Angeles region
UCLA (14)
Arizona
Creighton*
Wright State*
Fort Worth region
TCU (15)
Oklahoma
Iowa*
Columbia*
Irvine region
UC Irvine* (16)
Oregon
Fairfield*
Nevada*
Last four in: Troy, Kansas State, Xavier, Texas Rio Grand Valley.
Last four out: Kentucky, Western Kentucky, Michigan, Virginia.
Team breakdown by conference: SEC (13), ACC (9), Big 12 (6), Big Ten (4), Big East (3), Sun Belt (3), Big West (2), Southland (2).