NCAA Baseball tournament bracket announced!
Goot
Posts: 3,496
in Sports Talk
This morning the Field of 64 for the NCAA baseball tournament was announced. The top #8 national seeds are:
1. Miami (ACC Champs)
2. North Carolina
3. Arizona St. (Pac 10 Champs)
4. Florida State (GO NOLES!)
5. Cal State- Fullerton (Big West Champs)
6. Rice
7. LSU (SEC champs, riding a 20 game win streak)
8. Georgia
I've been lucky enough to see 5 of the top 8 teams play in person this year. I have seen FSU play 3 times, Miami 3 times, UNC once, Rice once, and LSU once. Since I attended the ACC baseball championship in Jacksonville this past weekend, I was also able to see tourney teams such as NC St., Georgia Tech, and Virginia. Florida is another tourney team I have seen in person.
From seeing these teams play, I have to say that Miami is truly the #1 team in the nation and are extremely deserving of the #1 seed. However, the selecton committee screwed them over and Miami will be hosting the toughest regional in the whole tournament. If they can get out of that undefeated, I have no doubt in my mind they'll continue their dominance.
There are also numerous intriguing potential matchups. Florida is in Florida State's bracket, GA Tech is in Georgia's bracket, San Diego and Cal are in Long Beach's region, Texas is in Rice's region as well as a few other neat match ups. Another thing to think about is that the winner of the Rice region, which will probably be either Rice or Texas could potentially play Texas A&M in a huge rivalry series that would determine who goes to the World Series.
The link shows how the Super regionals will be played as well if you go across horizontally. Thus, the the winner of the Coral Gables (Miami) regional will play the winner of the Ann ARbor (Michigan) regional or the winner of the Cary (UNC) region will play against the Conway (Coastal Carolina) region, and so on.
Bracket
1. Miami (ACC Champs)
2. North Carolina
3. Arizona St. (Pac 10 Champs)
4. Florida State (GO NOLES!)
5. Cal State- Fullerton (Big West Champs)
6. Rice
7. LSU (SEC champs, riding a 20 game win streak)
8. Georgia
I've been lucky enough to see 5 of the top 8 teams play in person this year. I have seen FSU play 3 times, Miami 3 times, UNC once, Rice once, and LSU once. Since I attended the ACC baseball championship in Jacksonville this past weekend, I was also able to see tourney teams such as NC St., Georgia Tech, and Virginia. Florida is another tourney team I have seen in person.
From seeing these teams play, I have to say that Miami is truly the #1 team in the nation and are extremely deserving of the #1 seed. However, the selecton committee screwed them over and Miami will be hosting the toughest regional in the whole tournament. If they can get out of that undefeated, I have no doubt in my mind they'll continue their dominance.
There are also numerous intriguing potential matchups. Florida is in Florida State's bracket, GA Tech is in Georgia's bracket, San Diego and Cal are in Long Beach's region, Texas is in Rice's region as well as a few other neat match ups. Another thing to think about is that the winner of the Rice region, which will probably be either Rice or Texas could potentially play Texas A&M in a huge rivalry series that would determine who goes to the World Series.
The link shows how the Super regionals will be played as well if you go across horizontally. Thus, the the winner of the Coral Gables (Miami) regional will play the winner of the Ann ARbor (Michigan) regional or the winner of the Cary (UNC) region will play against the Conway (Coastal Carolina) region, and so on.
Bracket
0
Comments
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<< <i>Does anyone even pay attention to college baseball? I live in Atlanta and never hear much about Tech or Georgia. They may mention a score or two on the news once in a while, but that's it. >>
That's surprising. It's HUGE in Florida (at least where I live) and figured it'd be the same up there. The ACC and SEC tournament's consumed the majority of the front page of the Sports section in my local newspaper (Florida Today) this past weekend.
The thing that is truly holding it back is the North and Midwest. These areas are plagued by cold weather, and since college baseball begins in February, most of these areas do not draw large crowds. I know Boston College draws a couple hundred people per game on average, while the local Division 2 team down here (Florida Tech) draws about 300 a game.
The ACC tournament is moving from Jacksonville to Fenway Park next year. Most of the people we spoke with at the tournament this weekend's first reaction.......BAD move. They obviously don't care about college baseball up there and the conference is moving the tournament away from it's most passionate baseball crowds......Florida State, Miami and GA Tech while moving it even further away from Clemson, UNC and NC ST. I would love to see the games at Fenway average the 5,000 or so that Jacksonville normally has per game but I'm just not seeing it.
Here's a picture I took about a month ago at an FSU game. The typical Spring Saturday in Tallahassee, 6700 people crammed into Dick Howser Stadium. (the red/garnet you see in the grandstand isn't a bunch of empty seats, those are just FSU shirts.
1. UCLA
2. UC Irvine
3. Cal State Fullerton
4. Long Beach State
/s/ JackWESQ
P.S. My personal odds of any one of these teams winning it all? Hmm ... 1 in 10.
collecting RAW Topps baseball cards 1952 Highs to 1972. looking for collector grade (somewhere between psa 4-7 condition). let me know what you have, I'll take it, I want to finish sets, I must have something you can use for trade.
looking for Topps 71-72 hi's-62-53-54-55-59, I have these sets started
<< <i>A couple teams you have to start watching for in the southeast in the next few years is Florida Gulf Coast and Kennesaw State. They both just came up to Division I recently and aren't eligible for the post season tournaments. They finished #1 and #2 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. I know Kennesaw has a few National Championships in their past, but at a different level. >>
Yep, they're definitely on my radar since my sister is a graduate of Stetson and they play in the same conference as FGCU and KSU. It's a shame that Stetson had such a horrible season (26-31 is HORRIBLE for them) and they couldn't make the tourney. They had been either conference or conference tournament champs the last 3 years in a row.
i dont catch too many games, but do my best to keep up to date on the teams. that long beach bracket looks brutal.
Here's the remaining field and the matchups (teams play best of 3 format)
Arizona @ #1 Miami
Coastal Carolina @ #2 UNC
Fresno State @ #3 Arizona State
Wichita State @ #4 Florida State
Stanford @ #5 Cal State Fullerton
Texas A&M @ #6 Rice
UC Irvine @ #7 LSU
NC State @ #8 Georgia
Winners of each series go on to the College World Series in Omaha.
Here's how the series are going in the best of 3 round....
#1 Miami vs. Arizona..................Miami wins 2-1
#2 UNC vs. Coastal Carolina......UNC Wins 2-0
#3 Arizona St vs. Fresno St........Fresno wins 2-1
#4 FSU vs. Wichita St.................FSU wins 2-1
#5 CSF vs. Stanford...................Stanford wins 2-0
#6 Rice vs. Tex. A&M..................Rice wins 2-0
#7 LSU vs. UC Irvine..................LSU wins 2-1
#8 Georgia vs. NC St..................UGA wins 2-1
Here's hoping the "third time is the charm" as they were the national runner-up the last 2 years.
GO HEELS!
I'm predicting Georgia vs. Fresno in the finals for an all Bulldog matchup. Georgia takes it in 3 games.
/s/ JackWESQ