It's official. Arkansas baseball is a national seed and will host a regional in the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Despite losing four of their last six SEC series, the Diamond Hogs join seven other SEC schools hosting this season.
While the SEC Tournament has been criticized for being a 'useless' postseason event, it helped at least two programs earn a top-16 seed. While Vanderbilt won the tournament over the weekend, they had to go through two of the hottest teams in the bracket. Ole Miss and Tennessee were borderline national seeds, heading into the weekend as the No. 7 and NO. 8 seeds, respectively.
The Vols went through Alabama, No. 1 Texas, and then fell to Vandy in the Semifinals. Ole Miss went a step further, making the SEC championship game and going through Florida, No. 2 Arkansas, and No. 3 LSU before finally falling to the Commodores 3-2.
Today, the teams will find out their seeding. Arkansas is projected to land anywhere from the 3-seed to the 4-seed, meaning the Razorbacks should host a Super Regional if they're fortunate enough to win the Fayetteville regional. Here are some of the projected opponents for Arkansas:
Arkansas baseball Fayetteville Regional projections
Baseball America
- Arkansas (4)
- Northeastern
- Miami
- UALR
Super regional draw: Oregon State (13)
D1Baseball
- Arkansas (4)
- Kansas
- Creighton
- UALR
Super Regional draw: Oregon (13)
Perfect Game
- Arkansas (5)
- Louisville
- Creighton
- UALR
Super Regional draw: Tennessee (13)
UALR is one of the favorites to land in the Fayetteville Regional. But Creighton is also projected in two of the three. However, the 2-seed is interesting. Northeastern has the longest win streak in the nation, winning 27 in a row to win the Coastal Athletic Association championship on its way to the NCAA Tournament.
Kansas won the most Big 12 games this season, but because West Virginia played fewer conference games, it won the regular season championship based on win percentage. The Hogs drawing the Jay Hawks would be extremely unfortunate. They're the de facto regular season champs in the Big 12, and lately, Arkansas has had trouble taking care of Big 12 teams in its regional. TCU and Kansas State defeated the in Fayetteville the last two seasons.
Louisville is by far the best draw in the three projections. Finishing 10th in the ACC, the Cardinals also lost their first game of the ACC Tournament to Pitt, 13-11. However, potentially giving Tennessee an opportunity for revenge in the Supers isn't ideal either.
You can tune-in to the NCAA Baseball Tournament selection show at 11:00 AM CST on ESPN2.
All 16 regional locations
- Athens (Georgia)
- Auburn (Auburn
- Austin (Texas)
- Baton Rouge (LSU)
- Chapel Hill (UNC)
- Clemson (Clemson_
- Conway (Coastal Carolina)
- Corvallis (Oregon State)
- Eugene (Oregon)
- Fayetteville (Arkansas)
- Hattiesburg (Southern Miss)
- Knoxville (Tennessee)
- Las Angeles (UCLA)
- Nashville (Vanderbilt)
- Oxford (Ole Miss)
- Tallahassee (Florida St.)