Batter up! Things to know as NCAA baseball tournament enters super regionals
Super regionals are the next stop on the NCAA baseball tournament's Road to Omaha.
Four of the best-of-three series are Friday through Sunday: Miami (34-25) at Louisville (38-21); No. 9 national seed Florida State (41-14) at No. 8 Oregon State (45-13-1); Arizona (42-18) at No. 5 North Carolina (45-13); and No. 13 Coastal Carolina (51-11) at No. 4 Auburn (41-18).
The four series Saturday through Monday: UTSA (47-13) at No. 15 UCLA (45-16); Murray State (42-14) at Duke (40-19); West Virginia (44-14) at No. 6 LSU (46-15); and No. 14 Tennessee (46-17) at No. 3 Arkansas (46-13).
The eight winners advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, starting June 13.
SEC flameout
The Southeastern Conference advanced only four of its record 13 tournament teams to super regionals. That ratio doesn't cut it when the metrics say you're the most powerful conference and you've produced the last five national champions, 10 of the last 15 and have had a team in 14 of the last 15 CWS finals.
The top two national seeds, Vanderbilt and Texas, are among the nine eliminated SEC teams. Since 2009, the SEC has failed to get fewer than half its qualifiers through regionals only four times but never fewer than a third until this year.
ACC on the rise
The Atlantic Coast Conference tied the record it set last year with five of its tournament teams making it through regionals. Miami-Louisville is the only all-ACC super regional, so the league is in position to send four teams to the CWS for a second straight year.
North Carolina is 13-3 since April 27 and has one of the best feel-good stories in ACC pitcher of the year Jake Knapp, who missed 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery. Florida State, in supers for a record 19th time, has one of the top offensive players in .400 hitter Alex Lodise.
Duke has a 40-win season for the second straight year and third time overall, all under Chris Pollard. Miami is in its first super regional since 2016 after winning at Southern Mississippi as the No. 3 regional seed. Louisville lost six of seven games before going 3-0 in the Nashville Regional.
Defending champs alive
Defending national champion Tennessee will be playing in its fifth straight super regional, but this year has not been a smooth ride. The Volunteers are 26-17 since starting 20-0. Despite losing key pieces from the 60-win title team to the MLB draft, they remain one of the nation's most talented teams.
Look at these lefties
The super regionals will feature three left-handers who are projected as the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 picks in the Major League Baseball amateur draft, according to MLB.com's Jim Callis.
Tennessee's Liam Doyle (10-3, 2.84) leads the country with 158 strikeouts and pitched nine innings over two appearances in regionals with 16Ks. LSU's Kade Anderson (9-1, 3.28) has 156 strikeouts and is coming off seven shutout innings with 11 Ks against Dallas Baptist. Florida State's Jamie Arnold (8-2, 3.12) struck out 13 in seven innings against Mississippi State.
Van Horn's home stretch?
Arkansas is the highest remaining national seed and its matchup with Tennessee is sure to draw the most eyes. The Razorbacks won two of three at home against Tennessee three weeks ago.
A national title is about all that's missing from the resume of 23rd-year coach Dave Van Horn. The Razorbacks have a nation-leading 379 wins since 2017 and were a dropped foul ball away from the 2018 championship. They'll be playing for an eighth CWS appearance under Van Horn, and this could be his last best chance to win the title if he makes it to Omaha.
While shaking hands with retiring Creighton coach Ed Servais after the regional final, the 64-year-old Van Horn told him, 'I'm not too far behind you.'
Those lovable Racers
With apologies to UTSA, Murray State earned the lovable underdog label by joining 2023 Oral Roberts and 2024 Evansville as No. 4 regional seeds to make supers.
Murray State beat No. 10 national seed Mississippi to become the 10th advancing No. 4 regional seed since 1999. Afterward, the Racers tweaked the SEC about the league's 'It Just Means More' slogan, posting on X, 'It Just Meant More.'
The Missouri Valley Conference's Racers scored 42 runs over four regional games and have won 27 of their last 32.
About the Roadrunners
UTSA, like Murray State, is a team nobody wants to face right now. The Roadrunners earned their first NCAA bid since 2013 and beat the big-brother Longhorns on back-to-back days to make their first super regional. UTSA entered the season 6-26 all-time against the Longhorns but went 3-0 against them this season.
Chants are back
The hottest team in the nation is Coastal Carolina, which is in its first super regional since the 2016 Chanticleers won the championship under Gary Gilmore.
Kevin Schnall, an assistant on the title team, took over for Gilmore this year and has the Chants poised to make another run. They've won 21 straight, have the nation's best winning percentage (.823) and are built on pitching, defense and a versatile offense.
Auburn will be a major challenge. The Tigers held a 28-11 scoring margin while going 3-0 in their regional and will host a super regional for the first time under 10th-year coach Butch Thompson.
Mountaineers on ascent
West Virginia's only super regional appearances have come in back-to-back years. The Mountaineers were swept at North Carolina in Randy Mazey's final season. Steve Sabins picked up where Mazey left off and led the Mountaineers to their first Big 12 regular-season title and a program-record 44 wins.
They regained their mojo in regionals, going 3-0 in two games against Kentucky and one against host Clemson. They had entered the tournament off losses in nine of their previous 13 games.
Ghosts of the Pac-12
The legacy of the Pac-12 is alive and well with Oregon State, Arizona and UCLA in super regionals.
Oregon State is playing two seasons as a baseball independent while it waits for the Pac-12 to reactivate July 1, 2026. The Beavers notably played only 19 regular-season games at home because of scheduling difficulties. They would end up playing eight postseason games in Corvallis if their series with FSU goes three games.
Arizona, now in the Big 12, is in its first super regional since 2016. UCLA, now in the Big Ten, is in supers for the first time since 2019, when it got knocked out by Michigan as the No. 1 national seed.
Home field advantage
Since the tournament went to its current format in 1999, the team hosting a super regional on its home field has won 69.5% of the time. That's 137 of 197 and does not include three series that were played at neutral sites.
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He's nearly 900 ahead of the next guy – Los Angeles Clippers guard James Harden , who has made 3,175. 19.6 feet That's the average shot distance for a Curry jumper since 2020-21 – nearly two feet further than any other player that has averaged 20 or more points in a season in the last five years. An NBA three pointer is 23 feet, 9 inches from top of the key, and 22 feet from the basket at the corners of the floor. .711 That's the Golden State Warriors' win percentage since 2015 with Curry in the lineup. That means the Warriors have won more than 70% of the time when Curry plays in that stretch. Needless to say, no team in the NBA has won more frequently in the last ten years. Quote of the week "It's a deep question, because you think about it all the time. I know I've been blessed with a God-given ability when I stepped foot on the floor when I was five years old. Figuring out a way to put the ball in a basket kind of came naturally. You add that with a work ethic that I know I've…I've poured my heart and soul into perfecting this craft and stretching my imagination on what I could actually do on a basketball court with the skill set of shooting. And even at 36 [now 37] and 16 years in the league, I still get lost in that pursuit of perfection. It's my happy place when I'm out there on the court. I truly enjoy it and have fun every time I'm out there. The job of the NBA and all that hasn't really threatened that at all. So, matching the God-given abilities and the work ethic and just being able to lose myself in the game, I think is a good formula." — Curry, answering my question of why, of every basketball player to ever step on a court, he's the best shooter of them all. Around the league A CNBC Sport exclusive - Sotheby's is auctioning off the jersey Curry wore when he made his first three-pointer in his first NBA season (2009-10). Curry made the shot in his second-ever NBA game. He went on to wear the jersey in 24 more games. To Sotheby's knowledge, the jersey "represents not only the first Stephen Curry rookie jersey ever offered at public auction, but also the most heavily worn Curry jersey—from any point in his career—known to have surfaced." The auction house estimates the jersey will sell for more than $1 million. The item will be offered as part of Sotheby's "Summer Sports Classics" auction, which begins later this month. Curry will once again participate in this summer's American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament, which he won in 2023, in South Lake Tahoe at the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course. He didn't play last year because he was in Paris winning a gold medal for the U.S. Olympic basketball team. The tournament will air on NBC Sports, Golf Channel and Peacock over the course of three days. He'll compete against other athletes and celebrities including his dad Dell and brother Seth, Tony Romo , Steve Young , Jerry Rice , Aaron Rodgers, Colin Jost and Charles Barkley , though it's debatable if you can say Barkley really competes (he finished in 81st the year Curry won but did improve to a respectable 58th last year). The tournament runs from July 11 to July 13.
