Omaha, Nebraska-After finishing one of the most dominant runs in SEC history, Tennessee was named No. 1 overall at the NCAA Baseball Tournament on Monday.
Volunteers (53-7) have won 31 of the first 32 games, dominating the SEC’s regular season and tournament titles, and have the best pitching and batting statistics in the country.
From March 28th, except for a week, they became the No. 1 team in consensus by voting and entered the region with 8 consecutive wins and 12 out of 13 wins.
“Winning the SEC tournament is really cool,” said Drew Gilbert, a Vols slugger.
The 64-team tournament will begin on Friday in 16 regions. The winner will advance to 8 of the 3 Super Regionals. The winners of these Super Regionals will advance to Omaha’s College World Series.
The top eight domestic seeds are guaranteed to host the super region if they win in the region.
Country species following Tennessee: Stanford (41-14), Oregon (44-15), Virginia Tech (41-12), Texas A & M (37-18), Miami (39-18), Oklahoma (39) -20) and East Carolina (42-18).
Stanford, who won the Pacific-12 Regular Season and Tournament titles, was second in 2018, making him the first national seed. Oregon State University gave Pacific-12 two of the top three seeds for the first time.
The penultimately selected Coastal ACC, Virginia Tech has the highest seeds in program history and will be playing in the region for the first time since 2013.
Texas A & M won the final seven SEC series under the direction of Jim Schlossnagle in the first year after not participating in the tournament last year and won the national seed.
East Carolina will play the 32nd time in the tournament. Pirates keeps the distinction that they made the most appearances without reaching the CWS.
Seeds 9-16: Texas (42-19), North Carolina (38-19), Southern Mississippi (43-16), Louisville (38-18-1), Florida (39-22), Auburn (37-19) , Maryland (45-12) and Georgia Southern (40-18).
ACC and SEC each selected the most teams, with 9 teams. Big 12 and Pac-12 each have five teams, and Sun Belt has four teams in the field.
Tennessee will begin regional play against Alabama (34-23). Other teams playing in Knoxville are Campbell (40-17) and Georgia Institute of Technology (34-22).
So far, Vols has soared to the highest season in program history in the fifth season of coach Tony Vitello. First baseman Justus Lipsius is a graduate student in his sixth season, joining the 2017 team under Dave Serrano and playing 7-21 at the SEC.
“When I came here, we weren’t expected to do much. We were a kind of laughter at the SEC,” Lipcius said. “Coach V and the staff came in and did their thing. They are recruiting players and making them better. It’s really nice to see it go around completely.”
The last four teams selected for the region were Florida, the Grand Canyon, Liberty, and Mississippi. The first four were North Carolina State University, Old Dominion, Rutgers, and Woford.
Mike Buddy, chairman of the selection committee and athletic director of the Army, said he was in favor of North Carolina State University because of his little help in the regular season conference series.
NCState and Ole Miss each won four of the ten conference series, but only one of the Wolfpack series opposed the NCAA Field (Georgia Tech) team, and Rebels defeated LSU and Auburn in the series. did.
“It was brutal,” Buddy said. “When it comes to the last three or four teams, we really need to split our hair. Baseball is a game played in a series. Unless it’s the only data point, we haven’t seen one game scenario. “
Other tournament notes:
• Florida has the longest continuous streak with 44 consecutive spawns. Other notable contiguous sources include Vanderbilt (16) and Florida (14).
• Copin State University (24-28) and Hofstra University (30-21) debut. The Air Force (30-27) is making the first one since 1969.
• The best story in the area could be the second day meeting between Texas A & M and the College Station TCU. Schloss Nagle left TCU for Aggie’s work after last season. The coach of TCU is Kirk Saarloos, who has been an assistant for 10 years under Schlossnagle.
• Michigan (32-26) was one of the big bid stealers who swiped the Big Ten’s automatic berth to win the conference tournament as the fifth seed and rejected the Rutgers spot.
• Copin State University is one of three teams that have lost records. Others are Binghamton (22-28) and New Mexico (24-32).
