2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction 6.0

With conference tournaments only a few weeks away, some teams are starting feel the pressure to improve their NCAA tournament resumes. One team on the bubble fired its coach earlier this week.

The reasons for Mississippi State to fire Chris Lemonis, the only coach to win a national title in the program’s history, are varied, but the fact the Bulldogs are looking like they’ll be outside the field of 64 had to be one of them.

Whether Mississippi State uses this firing to light a spark, go on a run and make the tournament remains to be seen. But there is one guarantee: Mississippi State’s next coach will be in the NCAA Tournament.

So, as you read this week’s tournament bracket prediction, keep that in mind. It might be an assistant coach (Georgia’s Will Coggin is a popular name) or another team’s head coach (Dallas Baptist’s Dan Heefner usually pops up in coaching searches).

Many more coaching changes are likely to come, but the fact an SEC program is one of the first, is telling about what point in the season we’re entering: crunch time.

Here are few notes and thoughts about this week’s tournament prediction:

• The SEC leads the way with 13 teams in this week’s bracket, which would be a new record. The ACC is next with 10 teams, Big 12 has six and the Big 10 has four. Seven of the 16 regional hosts are SEC teams, too.
• The very last team was the hardest decision this week. It wound up being Arizona State, but teams like McNeese, Western Kentucky and Grand Canyon all got serious consideration and at one point I did have McNeese in the field of 64. However, I don’t think the Southland conference will get three teams into the tournament and UT Rio Grande Valley was higher up in my rankings.
• I take that back. The hardest decision is trying to figure out what teams to include in what regionals. There are rules and guidelines, which I’m sure the selection committee has a computer program that does it for them. Lucky for them.

Reminder, this isn’t a projection. This is what I think the bracket would look like if the selection committee made its selections today. I use the D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings for the 16 national seeds and use current conference leaders to determine who receives the automatic tournament bids. Also, it seems fair to state that the teams ranked No. 16-25 will earn invites to the tournament. So, once those spots were filled, I was left with 15 at-large bids to hand out. With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s bracket 6.0:

NCAA Baseball Tournament Prediction 6.0: