Oregon’s great season was rewarded Sunday night as the NCAA announced that Eugene would be an NCAA regional site for the baseball tournament.
Well, there it is.
After some speculation, the NCAA made it official by announcing that PK Park would be one of the 16 host sites for the regionals round of the NCAA tournament. Oregon baseball hasn’t hosted a regional since the 2013 season.
Who the other three teams are that will join the Ducks in Eugene to play for a trip to the Super Regional won’t be known until Monday morning when the NCAA announces the seedings. Arizona and Stanford were also named as regional sites.
But just getting to the tournament, let alone hosting a regional is quite the accomplishment for Mark Wasikowski in his first full season as the Duck coach. When he arrived on the scene, the Oregon program was in disarray as the Ducks went 27-29 overall, but just 10-19 in Pac-12 play in George Horton’s final season.
The Ducks played just 15 games in 2020 before the pandemic hit, so who knows where that team would have ended up at. But in 2021, Wasikowski turned Oregon around and nearly won the Pac-12 title, going 20-10 in conference action, just one game behind Arizona, and 37-14 overall.
Everyone will find out who will be going where Monday at 9 a.m. on ESPN2 when they televise the NCAA baseball selection show. In order for the Ducks to be a possible Super Regional site, Oregon will have to be one of the Top 8 seeds in the tournament field.