How does NCAA baseball tournament work? Explaining regionals, supers, CWS format
Show Caption
Hide Caption
UNC baseball coach, players discuss winning 2025 ACC Tournament
After winning the 2025 ACC Tournament championship, Scott Forbes, Jackson Van De Brake and Gavin Gallaher discussed the Tar Heels' performance.
The field for the 2025 NCAA baseball tournament is officially set, as the entire 64-team bracket was revealed on Monday.
Vanderbilt was tabbed as the No. 1 overall seed in the country for the first time since 2007, while 12 additional SEC teams heard their names called during the bracket reveal show — the most bids by a conference in a single NCAA baseball tournament.
Speaking of the SEC, seven teams from the conference were given home-field advantage in the opening round by hosting a regional to open the postseason. The last five national champions from the College World Series have been from the SEC. Does that trend continue this year? Time will only tell come late June in Omaha, Nebraska at Charles Schwab Field.
REQUIRED READING: NCAA baseball bracket 2025: Full regional schedule, matchups, dates for CWS field
Regional play starts on May 30 with four noon ET first pitches at the Chapel Hill Regional (UNC vs. Holy Cross), Conway Regional (East Carolina vs. Florida), Athens Regional (Georgia vs. Binghamton) and Clemson Regional (Kentucky vs. West Virginia).
As the 2025 NCAA baseball tournament begins and progresses through the CWS, fans who watch the action unfold for the first time may wonder how the tournament format actually works. Here's what you need to know about the format of the NCAA baseball tournament:
How many teams make the NCAA baseball tournament?
A total of 64 teams make the NCAA baseball tournament, beginning with the regional round. The field is cut by 48 teams heading into the super regional round, at which point 16 teams remain.
After the super regional round, the field will be reduced to eight teams, each of which travel to Omaha for the College World Series. Two teams — one from each side of the CWS bracket — will advance to the finals, with one team left standing after one final best-of-three series.
How many rounds are there in the NCAA baseball tournament?
The NCAA baseball tournament is comprised of three rounds: the regionals, the super regionals and the College World Series.
NCAA baseball tournament format explained
The NCAA baseball tournament is comprised of 64 teams: 35 at-large bids and 29 automatic qualifiers in 2025.
Just like March Madness, the opening weekend of the NCAA baseball tournament is scattered throughout the country at 16 different regional site locations, which are awarded to the top 16 seeds in the bracket. The regional sites consist of a four-team bracket, or pod, and are generally geographically structured. As for the round itself, the format of the regionals is a double-elimination style.
To make it out of the regional round, a team can win three straight games or four games, the latter of which consists of making it out of the "elimination bracket" and beating the representative of the "winner's bracket" twice in the regional championship game.
Those who win their respective regional round will advance to the best-of-three super regional weekend. The super regionals are traditionally held at the home ballpark of the top eight seeds unless, of course, one of those respective teams is eliminated in the regional round.
From there, the final eight teams (i.e., those that win a super regional series), advance to the coveted College World Series.
College World Series format
Similarly to the regional round of the NCAA baseball tournament, the College World Series begins with a double-elimination style format comprised of two four-team brackets. In other words, the four teams in their respective bracket will clash against each other until there is a winner crowned in each bracket.
Those who lose their opening game in Omaha will fall into the "elimination bracket" with an 0-1 record. It's self-explanatory from there: survive and advance.
Those that win their opening game in Omaha will advance further in the "winner's bracket" with a 1-0 record. If a team starts the CWS with a 2-0 record, they will need just one additional win in the semifinals to advance into the CWS championship series. Meanwhile, those that lose a "winner's bracket" game will drop into the "elimination bracket" and look to come out of it by winning out.
The CWS championship series is a best-of-three format and features the winner of each side of the bracket. The minimum number of games a team can play in Omaha and win the CWS is five games, while the most would be seven games.
NCAA baseball tournament regional host sites 2025
Here's a full breakdown of the regional site location for the NCAA baseball tournament, the full ordering of which was announced Monday during the NCAA baseball selection show.
Nashville Regional (Vanderbilt) Austin Regional (Texas) Fayetteville Regional (Arkansas) Auburn Regional (Auburn) Chapel Hill Regional (North Carolina) Baton Rouge Regional (LSU) Athens Regional (Georgia) Corvallis Regional (Oregon State) Tallahassee Regional (Florida State) Oxford Regional (Ole Miss) Clemson Regional (Clemson) Eugene Regional (Oregon) Conway Regional (Coastal Carolina) Knoxville Regional (Tennessee) Los Angeles Regional (UCLA) Hattiesburg Regional (Southern Miss)
NCAA baseball tournament schedule 2025
Here's a breakdown of the key dates for the NCAA baseball tournament schedule:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
College football writer predicts Texas A&M to win double-digit games in 2025
Although the time for talking is nearing its conclusion, another college football analyst has predicted Texas A&M to win 10 regular-season contests in 2025. The Athletic college football writer Stewart Mandel recently predicted records for every program in the Southeastern Conference, while also attaching additional thoughts on the top contenders in the league this season. According to Mandel's projections, the Aggies will finish with a 10-2 (6-2 in SEC) overall record and a fourth-place finish to this year's campaign. While he is not the only media member predicting Texas A&M to finish with 10 wins for the first time since 2012, it is a testament to the true strength and depth of the roster in Bryan-College Station, Texas, this season and the potential the program has to break the glass ceiling finally. Here are Mandel's official 2025 SEC record predictions in the latest piece for The Athletic on Wednesday: It will not be an easy road for the Aggies this season, however. Entering his second year as Texas A&M's head coach, Mike Elko will lead his team against the No. 10 most-difficult schedule in college football in 2025. Road contests against Notre Dame, Arkansas, LSU and Texas will be challenging contests that will be integral in determining the success of the program this year. After finishing 2024 with an 8-5 (5-3 in SEC), Elko and company are seeking to rewrite the woes and demolish the stigma surrounding the Aggies' inability to close the season on the right foot. With some of the top-rated talent in the country wearing the Maroon and White in 2025, including linebacker Taurean York and offensive lineman Ar'maj Reed-Adams who rank in ESPN's Top 100 Players, Mandel believes that the Aggies are a true sleeper team heading into this season's ventures. "This is my SEC sleeper team. The Aggies quietly fielded the league's top scoring offense in conference play (29.4), and dynamic QB Marcel Reed figures to be more advanced. The backfield is deep, led by Le'Veon Moss. Yes, the defense has questions. But I like the Aggies to go on the road in Week 3 and upset Notre Dame." Before Texas A&M can make the trip to South Bend in a few weeks, the program must first take on UTSA on Saturday, August 30, at Kyle Field. Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Dylan on X: @dylanmflippo.
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
Where preseason polls, college football experts rank Georgia
The Georgia Bulldogs have high expectations entering the 2025 college football season, but Georgia is not considered the national championship or SEC championship favorites. Georgia is coming off a College Football Playoff appearance (lost to Notre Dame in the quarterfinals) and SEC championship win. The Bulldogs reloaded over the course of the offseason. Georgia added talented receivers like Zachariah Branch (USC) and Noah Thomas (Texas A&M) via the transfer portal to help projected starting quarterback Gunner Stockton. Georgia has a talented roster that coach Kirby Smart is trying to raise to the Georgia standard. The Bulldogs lost a significant amount of experienced starters in the trenches and quarterback Carson Beck this offseason, so that's why the Bulldogs aren't being ranked as the preseason No. 1 like they have been in the past. That suits coach Smart just fine. He'll consider Georgia's lower ranking to be disrespectful and use them as motivation for his team. Where the preseason polls rank Georgia football Where college football experts rank Georgia Follow UGAWire on Instagram or Threads for more Georgia football coverage!
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
College Football Playoff to tweak the way it evaluates teams during the 2025 season
The College Football Playoff says it's making some changes to the way it evaluates teams during the 2025 college football season. The playoff announced Wednesday that it was making 'enhancements to the tools that the selection committee uses to assess schedule strength and how teams perform against their schedule. The changes come after 9-3 Alabama was the first team left out of the playoff and ended the season ranked ahead of 10-2 Miami. 'The current schedule strength metric has been adjusted to apply greater weight to games against strong opponents,' the playoff's release said. 'An additional metric, record strength, has been added to the selection committee's analysis to go beyond a team's schedule strength to assess how a team performed against that schedule. This metric rewards teams defeating high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty for losing to such a team. Conversely, these changes will provide minimal reward for defeating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to such a team.' Based on the paragraph above, we're not sure if the playoff committee would have changed the way it ranked anyone in the top 15 a year ago. Though the Crimson Tide beat Georgia, Missouri and LSU, two of its losses were to teams that finished the regular season at 6-6. Alabama's third loss came by 21 points to Oklahoma in the penultimate week of the season. Miami, meanwhile, lost on the road to a 7-5 Georgia Tech team and a 9-3 Syracuse team. The Hurricanes didn't have any wins over teams who were ranked at the time of those games, though Louisville and Duke finished the season at 9-4. The CFP also said that it wouldn't make a rule prohibiting teams' rankings from changing ahead of the final set of rankings if those teams are not playing on conference championship weekend. 'The selection committee reaffirmed that movement in the final week should be evidence-based and did not recommend creating a formal policy prohibiting such movement,' the playoff said. The first set of playoff rankings will be released on Tuesday, Nov. 4 and there will be five sets of rankings before the final rankings that set the playoff field will be released on Sunday, Dec. 7. The top four teams in the 12-team playoff will again get byes this season, though the top four teams will be the top four teams in the rankings, and not the four highest-ranked conference champions.
