One would think going 35-14 overall and earning the fourth seed in the deepest conference in college baseball this season would be enough to earn an NCAA regional to host this college baseball postseason but that wasn’t the case for Notre Dame as the Irish will be the second seed in the Statesboro (Georgia) region.
Most believed Notre Dame was headed to hosting their own regional but that wasn’t the case as brackets were released on Monday. Mike Buddie, who holds a chair on the selection committee gave reason to why Notre Dame was left out as a regional host on ESPN2 following the selection show.
“When we were looking at Notre Dame, Oklahoma and LSU for some of those last host spots, we had to get really particular. Instead of looking just at Quad 1, we looked at record against teams ranked 1-25 to try and separate. Our belief was to be a national seed, unless you’ve done something spectacular in your conference regular season and/or winning the tournament like East Carolina, Stanford and Tennessee were able to do. How do you quorum against those really exceptional teams – those elite teams.
The region is a double-elimination format as Notre Dame will open against Texas Tech with the winner of that matchup meeting the winner of No. 1 Georgia Southern and No. 4 UNC-Greensboro.
Awaiting the winner of the Statesboro regional will then likely be top-overall seed Tennessee who is the runaway favorite to win the College World Series this year.
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