With NCAA Division I conference baseball tournaments now over, it is time for NCAA Regionals to begin this weekend. The regional hosts and teams playing in them were announced over the weekend. 16 teams will host regionals and with four teams at each site, a total of 64 teams will begin their journey to Omaha for the College World Series. Each regional field features four teams, playing in a double-elimination format.
Regionals are Full of the SEC
Regionals are very SEC heavy this year. The SEC has the most teams in the field with eight and four of those teams will be hosts for their respective regional. LSU, Arkansas, Florida, and Kentucky are all hosting and Florida and LSU are top eight national seeds, meaning they will get home field advantage for a Super Regional if they qualify for it.
In the Baton Rouge Regional the SEC Tournament champion LSU Tigers will host. The Tigers will take on Texas Southern on Friday. The winner of that game will take on the winner of the Rice and Southeastern Louisiana game.
For the Fayetteville Regional, Arkansas will hosts and they will face Oral Roberts in their first game on Friday. The winner of this one will play the winner of the Missouri State and Oklahoma State match up.
Kentucky is hosting a regional as well; they will play Ohio in their opening game and the winner takes on the winner of NC State and Indiana.
The Florida Gators will host the Gainesville Regional. The first game for the Orange and Blue will be against Marist College on Friday. Whoever wins that game will play against the winner between South Florida and Bethune Cookman.
GAINESVILLE REGIONAL
#1 Florida
#2 South Florida
#3 Bethune-Cookman
#4 Marist#RoadToOmaha pic.twitter.com/A0GYG6HFA3— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) May 29, 2017
Other SEC teams making a regional are Auburn (Tallahassee Regional) Mississippi State (Hattiesburg Regional) and Vanderbilt (Clemson Regional) and Texas A&M (Houston Regional).
Sunshine State Showing
The NCAA Regionals will also have a State of Florida feel to them as well. There are a total of six teams from the Sunshine State playing this week. Florida, UCF, USF, Bethune-Cookman, Florida Gulf Coast, and Florida State are playing postseason baseball.
https://twitter.com/UCF_Baseball/status/869229732524699648
Florida State will be the second regional site in the state. The ACC Tournament champion Seminoles will take on Tennessee Tech on Friday. In that Tallahassee Regional another Florida team UCF will take on Auburn. The winner of that game will face to winner of the FSU-Tennessee Tech game.
Florida Gulf Coast will take on Michigan in the Chapel Hill regional. The winner of this game will face either North Carolina or Davidson.
NCAA Regionals for baseball will start Thursday but most will get underway on Friday.
THE BRACKET.#RoadToOmaha ➡️ https://t.co/JtpNe1j8eq pic.twitter.com/7CFzrJcYR2
— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) May 29, 2017