New Projections Show Where WVU Stands Hours Before Top-16 Reveal

We are just hours away from finding out whether the West Virginia Mountaineers will be a host team in the regionals of this year's NCAA Tournament. While it seems as if WVU has done more than enough to earn that right to host, no one can blame you if you're entering tonight's top 16 seed reveal with some skepticism.

The NCAA selection committee, and the organization in general, gets stuff wrong all of the time. We saw it two years ago with the men's basketball team being blatantly snubbed for North Carolina, whose athletic director, Bubba Cunningham, was the Chair of the committee at the time.

Entering the conference tournament, West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins felt pretty good about where his team stood, and rightfully so. They had won nine of ten to end the year, including a sweep of the Big 12 regular season champ, Kansas. They avoided the disaster of being a one-and-done in the conference tournament and then fought past Arizona State to advance to the championship game.

Despite the lopsided loss to the Jayhawks last night, the two publications that are consistent with putting out new tournament projections regularly — Baseball America and D1Baseball — still have the Mountaineers hosting.

Baseball America

No. 1 West Virginia (12) vs. No. 4. South Dakota State
No. 2 Mississippi State vs. No. 3 The Citadel

D1Baseball

No. 1 West Virginia (16) vs. No. 4 Holy Cross
No. 2 Mississippi State vs. No. 3 Virginia Tech

Hosting is hosting, but in terms of hoping to advance to the College World Series, you really don't want to be in that 16th host spot. If you win the regional, you would hit the road to take on the No. 1 overall seed, assuming they take care of business, which will almost certainly be UCLA (50-6). The higher seed you get, the better chance you have to make it to Omaha.

Had the Mountaineers won the Big 12 championship last night, they probably would have been locked into a top-10 spot.

If you are one who is on the nervous side, you'll want to see UCLA and Georgia be crowned Big Ten and SEC champs this afternoon, which would weaken the case for Oregon and Arkansas over West Virginia.

The NCAA will unveil the 16 host teams tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET via press release and social media. We will breakdown the news shortly after the announcement is made.

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