NCAA Baseball Regional Host Sites Announced

The wait is over. The 16 host sites for this year’s NCAA Baseball Regionals were announced Sunday night, and we’re officially one step closer to the Road to Omaha. The whole 64-team field and national seeds drop Monday at noon ET, but for now, here are your regional hosts:

16 Sites and Hosts

Athens, GA – Georgia Bulldogs (42-15)

Auburn, AL – Auburn Tigers (38-18)

Austin, TX – Texas Longhorns (42-12)

Baton Rouge, LA – LSU Tigers (43-14)

Chapel Hill, NC – North Carolina Tar Heels (42-12)

Clemson, SC – Clemson Tigers (44-16)

Conway, SC – Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (47-11)

Corvallis, OR – Oregon State Beavers (41-12)

Eugene, OR – Oregon Ducks (42-14)

Fayetteville, AR – Arkansas Razorbacks (43-13)

Hattiesburg, MS – Southern Miss Golden Eagles (44-13)

Knoxville, TN – Tennessee Volunteers (43-16)

Los Angeles, CA – UCLA Bruins (42-15)

Nashville, TN – Vanderbilt Commodores (42-16)

Oxford, MS – Ole Miss Rebels (40-19)

Tallahassee, FL – Florida State Seminoles (38-14)

Initial Thoughts

The breakdown by conference was… 8 SEC, 3 ACC, 2 Big Ten, 2 Sun Belt, 1 Independent.

Five teams were fighting for a hosting spot: Tennessee, Southern Miss, UCLA, TCU, and Georgia Tech. The committee ended up picking Tennessee, Southern Miss, and UCLA, leaving TCU and Georgia Tech out of the running.

You could argue that all five teams had the resume to host. Georgia Tech and TCU, who missed both, had a top-25 RPI. TCU came as the biggest shock to me. The committee decided not to pick a single Big 12 team to host, which seems crazy, and the Horned Frogs obviously had the strongest resume.

This is a team that had an RPI of 18! You could argue they didn’t win the Big 12 Conference Tournament Championship, but Arizona and them played a barn burner that the Wildcats ended up pulling off in extra innings. It wasn’t like they got blown out.

TCU was 8-8 in Q1 and 14-8 in Q2 contests. They were one win away from 40 wins and had wins over ranked opponents at the time in Kansas. Their series losses against Southern Miss may have put the Golden Eagles above them, and that’s why they missed out, since it was so highly contested.

Outside of TCU, it feels like the committee got this mostly right. Georgia Tech was a hard sell. Sure, the RPI was ranked 22, and they were 12-11 against Q1 and 3-1 against Q2, but they also didn’t play Florida State or North Carolina in their ACC schedule, although that isn’t their fault.

Regardless, you would’ve thought the Yellow Jackets had a strong case with their Q1 performance and the regular season ACC title.

It just feels like it came down to thin margins when it came to choosing Tennessee or UCLA over Georgia Tech. Tennessee was ranked 12th in RPI, and UCLA was 10th.

We will find out the hosts’ seedings tomorrow at the NCAA selection show and get a sense of who will be playing in each host’s regional.

Join our On The Clock live stream tomorrow at 11:30 AM EST for in-depth analysis and break downs of the entire field of 64.