College baseball week in review: SEC teams jockeying for top seeds in NCAA tourney

By / / Sports / 8 minutes of reading


The NCAA Tournament field of 64 will be announced next Monday, with the SEC in position to grab as many as 10 of the coveted 16 Regional host sites and six of the eight national seeds.

Heading into conference tournament week, the following seven teams have all but locked up a top-eight seed, which would mean home-field advantage through the Super Regionals. Teams are in order of RPI, not projected seed.

  • Georgia (1)
  • Auburn (2)
  • Vanderbilt (3)
  • Texas (4)
  • Arkansas (5)
  • North Carolina (7)
  • LSU (8)

The following six teams are in strong position to host a Regional.

  • Oregon State (6)
  • Clemson (10)
  • Coastal Carolina (11)
  • Oregon (12)
  • Florida State (14)
  • UCLA (15)

Teams on the hosting bubble.

  • Alabama (9)
  • Florida (13)
  • Tennessee (16)
  • TCU (17)
  • Ole Miss (18)
  • Dallas Baptist (19)
  • Georgia Tech (20)
  • Southern Miss (21)
  • Kansas (23)

Some notes on the bracket hopefuls:

• Alabama’s RPI is very strong, but the Crimson Tide have only two series wins against likely NCAA Tournament teams (Oklahoma and Georgia, both at home).

• UCLA has a solid RPI and won a share of the Big Ten title, but the Bruins are only 3-7 in Quadrant 1 games (but 12-1 in Quad 2 games).

• Florida went 15-15 in the SEC, but six of those wins came against South Carolina and Missouri. On a positive note, the Gators won series vs. Texas (on the road) and Arkansas.

• Tennessee went 16-14 in the SEC but lost its last five series and has a very weak nonconference strength of schedule (216).

• If the committee wants to give the Big 12 a host, TCU and Kansas are at the top of the list.

Around the horn

Tennessee has joined a long list of defending national champions that have struggled, relatively speaking, the following season.

Only one of the last 10 national champs, 2017 Florida, was a top-eight seed the following season (the Gators were No. 1 overall). Four of the other nine were hosts but not top-eight seeds, and four failed to make the tournament.

Vanderbilt, the 2019 champs, did not have an opportunity to defend its title due to the pandemic. The Commodores were the No. 4 overall seed in 2021.

Georgia Tech delivered an unlikely ACC regular-season title in Danny Hall’s final year as the Yellow Jackets coach. Tech, picked 10th in the league in the preseason, took two of three over the weekend at Duke to finish 19-11 in the league, a half-game up on Florida State (17-10) and North Carolina (18-11) and one game up on NC State (17-11) and Clemson (18-12).

Hall is set to take the Jackets to the NCAA Tournament for the 25th time in his 31 complete seasons.

Vanderbilt enters the postseason as one of the hottest teams in the country. The Commodores won their final five SEC games — many in dramatic fashion — to finish 39-16 overall and 19-11 in the SEC.

Vanderbilt swept Kentucky in Nashville over the weekend, winning the first two games on back-to-back walk-off home runs. On Thursday night, outfielder Braden Holcomb, down to his final strike with two outs, hit a three-run blast to give Vanderbilt an 8-7 win.

Then, on Friday, after Kentucky rallied from down 7-5 in the top of the ninth to take an 8-7 lead, shortstop Jonathan Vastine hit a two-run home run with one out to walk off the Cats once again.

These heroics were nothing new for Vanderbilt. Two weeks earlier, the Dores rallied from down 7-2 in the eighth to beat Alabama with a two-run Holcomb homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

For Kentucky, it was a painful ending to a regular season that featured eight SEC losses by one run and another three by two runs. At 29-23 overall and 13-17 in the SEC with an RPI of 36, the Cats head to the SEC Tournament on the NCAA Tournament bubble. They play Oklahoma on Tuesday.

Southern Miss closed its regular season in style, sweeping Troy on the road to finish 41-13 overall and 24-6 overall. It’s the ninth consecutive 40-win season for the Golden Eagles, who have a chance to host a Regional with a strong showing at the Sun Belt tournament.

Coastal Carolina, which ended its season with a sweep at Old Dominion, won the regular-season Sun Belt title with a 26-4 record. The Chanticleers, with an RPI of 11, are in great position to host.

Troy, which dropped to 37-19 overall and 18-12 in the league, might have played its way back to the bubble after losing its last four regular-season games. The Trojans’ RPI of 44 is in the danger zone.

Oregon and UCLA shared the Big Ten title in their first season in the league, with the Ducks getting the No. 1 overall seed in the conference tournament due to their series win over the Bruins in April.

Iowa entered the weekend in first place, one game up on UCLA and two up on Oregon, but got swept by the Ducks in Iowa City to continue its late-season slide. The Hawkeyes, who lost five of their last six Big Ten games and went 1-8-1 overall in their last 10, now likely need to win the Big Ten tournament to make a Regional.

The Big Ten is looking like a three-bid league, with USC the only other team in good shape to receive an at-large bid.

What a wild ride the 2025 season has been for Kansas and third-year coach Dan Fitzgerald. Seven of the Jayhawks’ 10 Big 12 series resulted in a sweep, with KU on the winning end five times (Oklahoma State, UCF, Kansas State, Utah and West Virginia) and the losing end twice (TCU, Cincinnati).

Kansas finished the regular season 40-13 overall and 20-10 in the Big 12, percentage points behind league champ West Virginia (19-9).

The Big 12 is looking like a seven-bid league, though it could get shut out of the hosting picture. West Virginia, Kansas and TCU appear to be strong No. 2 seeds, while Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas State and Cincinnati are looking like No. 3 seeds.

Clemson stopped a late-season skid that included eight losses in its previous 10 ACC games by sweeping Pitt on the road over the weekend.

On Thursday night, Aidan Knaak, Joe Allen and Lucas Mahlstedt combined to throw the 15th no-hitter in program history and the first in an ACC game since 1976.

The no-hitter, however, was not a shutout. Pitt scored a run in the bottom of the eighth on a wild pitch after the runner reached base on a walk and then advanced to second on a hit by pitch and third on a sac fly.

The Tigers followed up Thursday’s 6-1 win with wins of 11-2 on Friday and 13-6 on Saturday. They ended the regular season 41-15 overall and 18-12 in the ACC and will be the No. 5 seed in the conference tournament.

Have a day, Justin Osterhouse.

On Thursday night, Purdue Fort Wayne’s sophomore third baseman hit four home runs, including a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth to cap an 11-run rally in the Mastodons’ 21-17 win over Wright State. He had five total hits, eight RBIs and one stolen base.

Oh, Osterhouse was also the winning pitcher after throwing a scoreless ninth inning in only his second appearance on the mound this season.

Osterhouse, a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., is hitting .323 with 16 home runs and 45 RBIs. The Mastodons finished the regular season 11-40 overall and 9-20 in the league.

Wright State, which took the final two games of the series, went 25-5 in the Horizon and won the regular season title by seven games over Northern Kentucky.

On March 21, Northeastern lost a home game to Towson, 3-2 in extra innings. The Huskies have lost only once since. They won 33 of their final 34 regular-season games, including their final 24.

Northeastern is 45-9 overall and went 25-2 in the Coastal Athletic Association — the best record in conference play by any team in the nation in 2025.

Columbia was the first team to officially qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The Lions, the No. 2 seed, swept through the four-team Ivy League tournament, beating No. 3 seed Penn 4-3 in 10 innings on Friday, No. 4 seed Harvard 4-1 in 10 innings on Saturday and Harvard once again, 14-6, on Sunday. This will be Columbia’s fifth Regional appearance dating back to 2013. The Lions went 2-2 as a No. 3 seed in the Blacksburg Regional in 2023, beating Gonzaga twice and losing to host Virginia Tech twice.

And finally

• Austin Peay set a program record with 43 regular-season wins and will be the No. 1 seed from the Gold Division in the ASUN tournament this weekend in Deland, Fla. Stetson, the tournament host, is the No. 1 seed from the Graphite Division. (And yes, the divisions are called Gold and Graphite.)

• East Carolina went 13-14 in the American Athletic Conference, only the fourth time this century the Pirates have had a losing record in league play.

• UC Irvine won the Big West title by a game over Cal Poly but lost its final two home series, dropping two out of three to UC San Diego and Fullerton State. The Anteaters’ RPI is down to 24, which puts their chances of hosting in serious danger.

• Creighton swept Georgetown on the road to clinch a share of the Big East title with UConn. The Bluejays are the No. 1 seed in the league tournament thanks to their series win over UConn in Omaha in early April. The four-team Big East tournament, held in Mason, Ohio, will include Creighton, UConn, Xavier and St. John’s.

• San Diego was 0-8 on Feb. 25 and 3-18 on March 21. Fast-forward three months, and the Toreros could get to the .500 mark by winning the West Coast Conference Tournament. USD, now 25-28, won the WCC title with a 19-5 record and will be the No. 1 seed this week in Las Vegas.

(Photo of Jake Brown: Scott Clause / USA Network via Imagn Images)





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