NCAA baseball tournament bracket: UCLA, LSU top 2 seeds; UNC snubbed
The 64-team NCAA baseball tournament bracket was released on Monday, with a few mild surprises. UCLA got the No. 1 overall seed while LSU, the top-ranked team in the nation according to Baseball America, was No. 2. Both those teams were among the eight national seeds, joined by Louisville, Florida, Miami, Illinois, TCU and Missouri State.
The Bruins won the 2013 national championship, the first baseball title in school history. LSU has won six national titles, the most recent of which came in 2009, but it was a different SEC team—Vanderbilt—that took home the championship last year.
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The Tigers and Commodores were joined as No. 1 seeds from the SEC by Florida and Texas A&M. The ACC had three No. 1 seeds: Louisville, which won a conference title for the third straight year in its third different league; Miami and Florida State. The most notable snub from the field was another ACC team, North Carolina. The Tar Heels, who have been to six of the past 10 College World Series, ranked No. 24 in RPI, by far the highest of any team that was left out. Texas, which has the most CWS trips ever (35), likely would have missed out too, but the Longhorns won the Big 12 tournament to gain the conference's automatic bid.
The double-elimination tournament starts this weekend with play at the 16 regional sites, each of which has four teams; the No. 1 seed at each regional is the host team. The winners of those regionals advance to the eight-team Super Regionals, to be played June 5-8. The winners of those best-of-three matchups advance to the College World Series, which is also double-elimination, in Omaha, Neb., and starts on June 13. The two teams that survive each half of the CWS bracket meet in a best-of-three CWS finals, which starts on June 22.
Below is the full bracket. The Los Angeles Regional and Baton Rouge Regional are on opposite sides of the bracket:
Los Angeles Regional
1 UCLA (42-14)
4 Cal State Bakersfield (36-22-1)
3 Maryland (49-21)
2 Ole Miss (30-26)
Bakersfield Regional
1 UC Santa Barbara (40-15-1)
4 San Diego State (40-21)
3 Virginia (34-22)
2 USC (37-19)
Stillwater Regional
1 Oklahoma State (37-18)
4 St. John’s (39-14)
3 Oral Roberts (41-15)
2 Arkansas (35-22)
Springfield Regional
1 Missouri State (45-10)
4 Canisius (34-28)
3 Oregon (37-23)
2 Iowa (39-16)
Coral Gables Regional
1 Miami (44-14)
4 FIU (29-29)
3 Columbia (31-15)
2 East Carolina (40-20)
Dallas Regional
1 Dallas Baptist (43-13)
4 VCU (37-22)
3 Texas (30-25)
2 Oregon State (38-16-1)
Tallahassee Regional
1 Florida State (41-19)
4 Mercer (35-21)
3 Auburn (35-24)
2 College of Charleston (43-13)
Gainesville Regional
1 Florida (44-16)
4 Florida A&M (23-23)
3 South Florida (33-24-1)
2 Florida Atlantic (40-17)
OTHER SIDE OF BRACKET
Baton Rouge Regional
1 LSU (48-10)
4 Lehigh (25-29)
3 Tulane (34-23)
2 UNC Wilmington (389-16)
Houston Regional
1 Houston (42-18)
4 Houston Baptist (28-25)
3 UL Lafayette (39-21)
2 Rice (35-20)
College Station Regional
1 Texas A&M (45-11)
4 Texas Southern (31-17)
3 California (34-19)
2 Coastal Carolina (38-19)
Fort Worth Regional
1 TCU (45-11)
4 Sacred Heart (23-30-1)
3 Stony Brook (34-14-1)
2 NC State (34-21)
Champaign Regional
1 Illinois (47-8-1)
4 Ohio (36-19)
3 Wright State (41-15)
2 Notre Dame (36-21)
Nashville Regional
1 Vanderbilt 42-19
4 Lipscomb (39-18)
3 Indiana (34-22)
2 Radford (43-14)
Fullerton Regional
1 CS Fullerton (34-22)
4 Pepperdine (30-27)
3 Clemson (32-27)
2 Arizona State 34-21
Louisville Regional
1 Louisville (43-16)
4 Morehead State (38-20)
3 Michigan 37-23
2 Bradley (35-19)
