Kansas Baseball Set to Face Creighton in NCAA Regional

The Kansas baseball team is officially headed back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in more than a decade.

On Monday, it was announced the Jayhawks would be the No. 2 seed in the Fayetteville Regional facing off against the No. 3 seed Creighton Bluejays this Friday at 7 p.m. CT. Creighton won the Big East regular season and tournament championships this year and own a 41-14 record overall. The Arkansas Razorbacks are the host team and No. 1 seed who will take on the fourth seeded North Dakota State Bison at 2 p.m. CT on Friday.

NCAA Regionals are set up in a double-elimination format, so KU will have a second game regardless of how they finish in the first one on Friday. The winner of the Fayetteville Regional will move on to play in super regionals next weekend against the winner of the Knoxville Regional in a three-game series for a chance to play in this year’s College World Series.

If KU and Arkansas both win their first-round matchup this Friday, it will be the third time in the last three years that a Jayhawks team has faced the Razorbacks in national postseason play after KU basketball lost to Arkansas in the NCAA Tournament this year and KU football lost to Arkansas in an epic showdown in the 2022 Liberty Bowl.

KU enters the NCAA Tournament after having their greatest regular season in program history.

The Jayhawks finished with a 43-15 record overall, including a 20-10 Big 12 record – good for a second-place finish in the league. The team also set numerous program season records this year including most home runs (100 hit as of today), road wins (20), conference series wins (7), and more. The 43 total wins is tied for second most in school history behind the 1993 team who finished with a 45-18 record in route to KU’s only College World Series appearance to date.

This will be KU’s first NCAA Regional since 2014 and the first under head coach Dan Fitzgerald, who says the team expected to be in this position before the season began.

“Coming into this year we knew that we were a regional team,” Fitzgerald said. “It was just about going out and executing. If you think about how we did execute, it was pretty fantastic. We won the games we were supposed to win and the times that we stubbed our toe, you can count them. This is incredibly fulfilling."

Tickets for the Fayetteville Regional will be available to purchase starting Tuesday at 9 a.m. CT through the Arkansas Athletics website. The first-round games will also be streamed live on ESPN+.