2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction 5.0

After taking steps away from hosting a NCAA Regional against Oklahoma, Vanderbilt took a superman-like leap to No. 9 in the nation and return to the list of NCAA Tournament national seeds.

If the NCAA Baseball Tournament bracket was set today, Vanderbilt would host an NCAA Regional along with seven other SEC schools. It’s a quick turnaround for Vanderbilt and it won’t be easy to keep that status (see Tuesday night’s loss to Middle Tennessee).

It’s really a double-edged sword the Commodores face in the season’s final month. On one side, 10 of the Commodores’ final 14 games are against ranked opponents, meaning there aren’t many “easy” games and the losses could pile up.

On the other side…10 of the Commodores’ final 14 games are against ranked opponents, meaning there’s an opportunity to move up even higher in the rankings if the wins pile up. (See? Double-edged sword and, frankly, that’s true for 15 of the SEC’s 16 teams [sorry Missouri].)

So, there is a Nashville Regional in my NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket Prediction 5.0 that you can see in full below. First, here are a few notes and thoughts I had when making this bracket:

If this was the official bracket, the SEC would set a new record for most teams from one in conference in NCAA Tournament for the third-straight year. There 13 SEC teams in this bracket, 10 ACC teams, five Big 12 teams and three Big 10 teams.
I almost put Southeastern Louisiana in instead of USC and if SLU had beaten Southern Miss on Tuesday, I would’ve done it. But, for now, SLU is my first team out of the tournament.
When I did my rankings, I was surprised Florida was high as it ended up being. Personally, I’m not sold on the Gators as a tournament team, but it came down to them or Mississippi State as the 13th SEC team and the Gators just won that head-to-head series, so they’re in.
One note on how I place teams in regionals: I don’t include teams from the same conferences in the same regionals and I try to not have teams making cross-country trips, especially the No. 4 seeds. What I don’t worry too much about is balance and not turning a regional into a “group of death” bracket. If it happens, so be it, but don’t tell me the Los Angeles and Norman Regionals below wouldn’t be exciting.

Reminder, this isn’t a projection. This is what I think the bracket would look like if the selection committee made its selections today. I use the D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings for the 16 national seeds and use current conference leaders to determine who receives the automatic tournament bids. Also, it seems fair to state that the teams ranked No. 16-25 will earn invites to the tournament So, once those spots were filled, I was left 14 at-large bids to hand out. There were 15 at-large bids last week, but Iowa leads the Big 10 and UCLA got an at-large bid as a national seed. Without further ado, here’s bracket 5.0: