SEC stumbles lead NCAA baseball tournament winners and losers in regional round
SEC stumbles lead NCAA baseball tournament winners and losers in regional round
History was made in the NCAA baseball tournament.
And not the good kind, either, if you're No. 1 Vanderbilt and No. 2 Texas. These two leading contenders for the national championship were quickly ejected from their respective regionals over the weekend, marking the second time since national seeding was introduced to the tournament in 1999 that the top two seeds failed to advance out of regionals.
After losing to Louisville on Saturday and Wright State on Sunday the Commodores became the first No. 1 overall seed to be eliminated in the regionals altogether since UCLA in 2015 and the first No. 1 seed under the current format to fail to at least reach its regional final.
The Longhorns lost to Texas-San Antonio twice in as many days. The Roadrunners were 0-6 in its tournament history entering the weekend while Texas, hosting a regional for the 38th time, won the SEC regular-season crown by two games under first-year coach Jim Schlossnagle.
These upsets serve as a black eye for the SEC, which dominated the regular season, the USA TODAY Sports college baseball poll and the 64-team bracket. With No. 7 Georgia and No. 10 Mississippi also sent packing, the SEC now turns to No. 3 Arkansas, No. 4 Auburn and No. 6 LSU to carry the flag for the conference. The Tigers were pushed to the brink by underdog Little Rock but managed to eke out a 10-6 on Monday night to advance.
The tournament continues with super regionals beginning on Friday. Those are best-of-three series played on the home field of the higher-ranked team. From there, the eight winners advance to Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska, for the College World Series.
Led by the two massive disappointments coming out of the SEC, here are the biggest winners and losers from the opening weekend:
Winners
Arkansas
The Razorbacks went unscathed through their regional - winning by a margin of 26-6 in three games - and are now the highest remaining seed left in the field. While this makes Arkansas the de facto favorite moving forward, the aforementioned chaos that is college baseball means a title is anything but guaranteed for a program that has never won the College World Series and has endure several heartbreaks along the way.
The ACC
By the conclusion of Sunday's action, three ACC squads had punched their tickets to the next round and two more added to the league's total on Monday when North Carolina and Miami were victorious. Two of the weekend victors, Duke and Louisville, advanced through regionals hosted by SEC members, a particularly satisfying outcome for certain fan bases subjected to the 'it just means more' mantra on a daily basis. It wasn't all good news for the league as national seed Clemson and regular-season conference champ Georgia Tech were knocked out, but thus far it's been a promising showing for the conference.
Texas-San Antonio
The Roadrunners were known to be dangerous heading into the tournament, and they proved it with a pair of wins against No. 2 seed Texas. UTSA won a 9-7 slugfest Saturday to send the Longhorns into the losers' bracket, then jumped on Texas early once again Sunday and held on 7-4 to reach the super regionals for the first time in program history. The Roadrunners, who were winless in their previous three trips to the tournament, next face UCLA.
West Virginia
The Mountaineers provided arguably the most dramatics of the weekend. After rallying Saturday to defeat host Clemson, West Virginia again found itself trailing in the late innings Sunday against Kentucky. But the Mountaineers overcame a 12-7 deficit with a six-run eighth and held on to eliminate the Wildcats 13-12 to secure a second consecutive trip to the super regionals.
The erstwhile Pac-12
The former power conference will be well represented in the round of 16. The first weekend wasn't all good for former Pac-12 schools with nationally seeded Oregon making an early exit, but a trio of other former league members did advance, with Oregon State joining Arizona and UCLA after its defeat of Southern California on Monday night.
Coastal Carolina
The 13th-seeded Chanticleers completed a sweep of their home regional in Conway, South Carolina., finishing it off Sunday with a masterful pitching performance from Riley Eikhoff and Dominick Carbone in a 1-0 shutout against East Carolina. The Pirates made a surprising run to the regional final by knocked off Florida twice after qualifying for the field by winning the American Athletic tournament.
Oklahoma State
The Athens regional ended painfully for Oklahoma State, which seemed poised to put the tying run on base on a wild pitch in the ninth inning of Sunday's elimination game against Duke but had the runner called out for leaving the baseline and interfering with the throw to first. But one of the last four teams in the World Series field also captured maybe the most dramatic moment of the weekend. Earlier on Sunday, the Cowboys trailed Georgia 9-7 heading into the bottom of the ninth but rallied for four runs, ending things on a two-run, walk-off blast by third baseman Brock Thompson.
Mississippi State
After making a coaching change amid a disastrous start to SEC play, Mississippi State rebounded to reach the final of the Tallahassee regional before losing to No. 9 Florida State. That marked the second year in a row the Bulldogs were bounced in the opening weekend; the program hasn't advanced to Super regionals since winning the whole thing in 2021. But the weekend ended with some very good news: Late on Sunday night, Mississippi State announced the hire of longtime Virginia coach Brian O'Connor, a five-time ACC coach of the year who led the Cavaliers to the 2015 national title.
Losers
Vanderbilt
The top-ranked team in the tournament led for just one of 27 innings over the weekend: Vanderbilt needed a three-run seventh inning and another run in the bottom of the eighth to beat Wright State 4-3 in Saturday's regional opener. You can attribute this historic tournament exit to the Commodores' disappearing bats. One of the hottest teams in the country heading into tournament play, Vanderbilt scored 10 runs over these three games and hit just .132, managing just four hits in the opener, five in the 3-2 loss to eventual regional winner Louisville and then three in the 5-4 loss to the Raiders. Two-time national champions under celebrated coach Tim Corbin, the Commodores reached the finals in 2021 but haven't advanced out of the regionals since.
Texas
This had been a banner year for the Longhorns, who were buoyed by the offseason addition of Jim Schlossnagle from rival Texas A&M. But things had started to unravel down the home stretch of the regular season, capped by an early exit from the SEC tournament, so there were some warning signs heading into regionals. This was still a completely unexpected whipping at the hands of Texas-San Antonio.
Oregon
After dropping the opener of the Eugene Regional to Utah Valley – the 6-5 loss included a controversial decision to remove an Oregon run due to 'malicious contact' on a play at the plate – the No. 12 Ducks trailed Cal Poly 3-1 after three in Saturday's elimination game before rallying for seven runs across the middle innings to lead 8-5 heading into the bottom of the seventh. Then came the meltdown: Oregon reliever Ian Umlandt walked in a run, gave up a two-run single and then another run-scoring single to hand the Mustangs the 9-8 lead. They'd add another run in the bottom of the eighth for the 10-8 win. Losses from higher-ranked teams meant the Ducks were in line to host a Super regional; that makes this collapse all the more painful.
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