UNC, NC State & ECU selected as hosts for NCAA Baseball regional round; ACC champ Duke hitting the road :: WRALSportsFan.com
On Sunday, The NCAA Division I Baseball Committee announced Raleigh and Chapel Hill as regional sites for the NCAA Baseball Championship Tournament.
The University of North Carolina Tar Heels and North Carolina State Wolfpack received bids to the tournament for being host cities for the regional rounds. The East Carolina Pirates were also selected to host a regional.
The Chapel Hill regional features No. 4 seed UNC (42-13), Long Island, Wofford and LSU at Bryson Field at Boshamer Stadium. The Tar Heels face Long Island on Friday at 6 p.m. LSU is the defending national champion and has standout third baseman Tommy White, who played his freshman season at NC State.
In Raleigh, No. 10 seed State (33-20) will host South Carolina, James Madison and Bryant at Doak Field. The Wolfpack faces Bryant on Friday at 7 p.m.
The Duke Blue Devils, who won the ACC Championship over Florida State on Sunday, were not selected to host a regional. No. 15 Duke (39-18) is headed to Norman, Oklahoma, to join a regional with Oklahoma, Oral Roberts and UConn at L. Dale Mitchell Park. The first game for the Blue Devils comes against UConn on Friday at 1 p.m.
Duke finished one win short of a trip to the College World Series (CWS) in 2023.
In Greenville, No. 16 seed ECU (43-15) will host Evansville, VCU and Wake Forest at Clark-Leclair Stadium. The Pirates start tournament play against Evansville Friday at 1 p.m.
UNC is hosting a regional for the 13th time in program history and is hoping to return to the CWS for the first time since 2018. State is hosting a regional for the first time since 2016 and last played in the CWS in 2021.
The 16 regional sites, with host institutions and records, are as follows:
- Athens, Georgia – Georgia (39-15)
- Chapel Hill, North Carolina – North Carolina (42-13)
- Charlottesville, Virginia – Virginia (41-15)
- Clemson, South Carolina – Clemson (41-14)
- Bryan-College Station, Texas – Texas A&M (44-13)
- Corvallis, Oregon – Oregon State (42-14)
- Fayetteville, Arkansas – Arkansas (43-14)
- Greenville, North Carolina – East Carolina (43-15)
- Knoxville, Tennessee – Tennessee (50-11)
- Lexington, Kentucky – Kentucky (40-14)
- Norman, Oklahoma – Oklahoma (37-19)
- Raleigh, North Carolina – NC State (33-20)
- Santa Barbara, California – UC Santa Barbara (42-12)
- Stillwater, Oklahoma – Oklahoma State (40-17)
- Tallahassee, Florida – Florida State (42-15)
- Tucson, Arizona – Arizona (36-21)
High Point and UNC Wilmington also were picked for the 64-team field.
Each regional field features four teams playing in a double-elimination format. The 16 regionals run from Friday, May 31, through Monday, June 3, if necessary.
The full 64-team field, top-16 national seeds, first-round regional pairings and site assignments will be announced at Noon (ET), on Monday, May 27. The one-hour program will be shown live on ESPN2.
The College World Series will begin June 14 in Omaha.
Source: wralsportsfan.com