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 12.
Who’s hot
Alabama State (34-21) and The Citadel (35-24) each have won eight straight games entering regionals.
SWAC Tournament champion Alabama State, which opens at Alabama as a No. 4 seed, turned nine double plays and averaged better than eight runs per game in the conference tournament. Miguel Oropeza drove in 13 runs over the last four games.
The Citadel (35-24), which plays Oklahoma as a No. 3 seed in Atlanta, knocked off regular-season champion Mercer twice on its way to the Southern Conference title. The Bulldogs have won 17 of their last 20.
Who’s not
Boston College (36-21) has lost four in a row entering its game against Liberty as the No. 2 seed in Athens, Georgia. The Eagles have been outscored 46-5 over those games — 38-3 in three games against Georgia Tech and 8-2 by Miami in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.
Kentucky (31-21) has dropped three in a row and 11 of its last 16.
Still waiting
East Carolina (36-22-1), which received the American Athletic’s automatic bid by winning the conference tournament, has never reached the College World Series in 35 previous NCAA Tournament appearances, the longest streak of its kind. The Pirates are in an eighth straight regional and 10th in 11 years.
Florida State (38-17) has never won a national championship in 61 previous appearances. The Seminoles are a regional host for a record 38th time and open against St. John’s (33-24).
Welcome to the party
Tarleton State (37-19) is the only first-time participant, winning the Western Athletic Conference Tournament to earn the No. 3 seed in Austin, Texas. The Texans also won the WAC in 2024 but weren’t eligible for NCAA championships because they were transitioning from Division II.
Tarleton State, which opens against UC Santa Barbara (38-18), owns three wins over teams from power conferences. The Texans will be playing on the same field where they beat regional host Texas in March.
Toughest regional
The Lincoln Regional, hosted by Nebraska, appears to be the toughest of the 16.
Nebraska (42-15), the No. 13 national seed, won 40 regular-season games for the first time since 2003 and will play in a regional at home for the first time since 2008. The Cornhuskers played a meaty nonconference schedule and posted wins over national seeds Auburn, Florida State and Oregon.
Mississippi (36-21), the No. 2 regional seed, played the fourth-toughest schedule in the country and was in the running to be a host until two weeks ago. The Rebels lost 10 of their last 17 and tied for ninth in the SEC.
The Rebels open against No. 3 regional seed Arizona State (37-19). The Sun Devils tied for third in the Big 12 and bring a powerful offense featuring conference player of the year Landon Hairston, who has 28 homers.
South Dakota State (24-31), the bottom seed, opens against Nebraska. The Jackrabbits lost 5-4 in Lincoln in March.
No guarantees
Regional hosts have advanced to super regionals 66.3% of the time (276 of 416) since the tournament went to its current format in 1999. Last year, nine hosts won regionals.
The fewest hosts to advance were seven in 2007 and 2014 and eight in 2018.
Feeling a draft
Fourteen of the first 25 players in the mock draft by MLB.com analyst Jonathan Mayo are in the tournament, including three of the top five.
Heading the group are UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky (1), UC Santa Barbara RHP Jackson Flora (3), Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey (5), Georgia Tech outfielder Drew Burress (7), Texas A&M second baseman Chris Hacopian (8) and Arkansas catcher Ryder Helfrick (10).
Next are Alabama shortstop Justin Lebron (11), Florida RHP Liam Peterson (12), Virginia outfielder A.J. Gracia (14), Kentucky shortstop Tyler Bell (17), Coastal Carolina RHP Cameron Flukey (18), Tennessee RHP Tegan Kuhns (23), Arkansas LHP Hunter Dietz (24) and Virginia shortstop Eric Becker (25).
Bashing Bulldogs
Georgia leads the nation in home runs for the second straight year and is on pace to set its single-season record. The Bulldogs enter with 149 in 58 games, two shy of the 151 in 60 games in 2024. The Bulldogs are in their fourth straight season with at least 100 homers.
SEC player of the year Daniel Jackson leads the Bulldogs with 27 and is among six players with double-digit homers.
Who is this guy?
The best player you’ve probably never heard of is Cincinnati first baseman Quinton Coats. The 6-foot-3, 225-pound sophomore is tied for fourth nationally with 28 homers, is fifth with 78 RBIs and third in the Big 12 with a .764 slugging percentage. He has four multi-homer games and went hitless in just six of 57 games.
Geography lesson
California, Florida and Texas each have five teams in regionals, most among the 30 states represented in the tournament. Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia each have four schools in regionals.
Massachusetts, not known as a bastion of college baseball, has three teams in the tournament in Boston College, Holy Cross and Northeastern.
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