The field in Omaha-64, Nebraska is finally set and the 2022 NCAA Baseball Tournament is set to begin this weekend!
Unlike men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the baseball version does not comply with the standard 64-team single elimination style format. As a result, most people who aren’t very familiar with the inner workings of a tournament can easily get confused about how the tournament actually works. There’s a lot of information to take in, but the purpose of this piece is to help educate everyone about how the tournament works.
Basically, a tournament is a combination of both double elimination and best of 3 tournament formats. Regional is the former, Super Regional is the latter, and the College World Series is a combination of both. If you’re still confused, do this one at a time.
National seed
Before the game starts, it starts with sowing first. The top 16 teams in the tournament will be assigned a so-called “national seed”. This helps shape the tournament and specify who is playing who and where they are playing as they move on to the next round. Each team assigned a national seed will be granted regional round hosting rights.
The only way National Seeds can’t host regionals is if there is a schedule conflict with other tenants using the host team’s facilities, or if the team’s facilities have the right criteria to accommodate all potential media. If not met. This rule also applies to Super Regional, but it has only appeared twice in the history of tournaments.
Obviously, this also means that there are 16 host sites, as there are 16 domestic seeds. All 16 regionals have been tuned to fit the standard 16 team single elimination tournaments. That is, the 1st seed regional matches the 16th seed regional and the 2nd seed matches the 15th seed. This works at all levels of the NCAA Baseball Tournament, including up to the CWS final.
area
Well, to the regional itself. The regional is a four-team double elimination tournament, with the regional national seed being the first seed. It follows the following format:
In the first two regional games, the 1st seed is the 4th seed, the 2nd seed is the 3rd seed, and the rest of the regionals play from there. After that, the regional winner goes to super regional.
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Super regional
Super Regional is much easier than Regional because it consists of only two teams in the Best 3 Series. Determining who the Super Regional host is between the two regional winners is determined by:
- The highest regional seed in Super Regional will be the host. For example, if the winner in one region is the first seed in that region and the winner in the other region is the third seed in that region, the first seed will be hosted.
- If both regional winners are country seeds, the higher country seeds will be hosted.
- If they are a similarly seeded team, the official tiebreakers listed on the NCAA website are: the host. If only one of the teams submits a proposal and the proposal is accepted, that team shall host it. “
Once the host site is decided, the two teams will play the Best 3 Series and the winner will advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
College World Series
The Regional is Double Elimination and the Super Regional is the best three, but the College World Series takes it a step further and combines both formats. The remaining eight teams that punched the ticket to Omaha will be squared in a pair of four teams’ double elimination tournaments, and the winner of each tournament will face off in the best three series, the CWS Final.
The placement of each team in the College World Series is not random and follows the model of the first regional pairing. For example, if all of the top 8 domestic seeds reach the CWS, bracket 1 will consist of No. 1 vs. No. 8 and No. 4 vs. No. 5, and bracket 2 will consist of No. 3 vs. No. 6 and No. .2 vs. No.7 is vaguely similar to the standard 8-team single elimination bracket.
If you have more confusion about how the tournament works, follow the links here For detailed interactive brackets on the NCAA website.
(Photo of CWS logo: Calvin Mattheis-Imagn Content Services, News Sentinel via LLC)
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