On Monday, May 30, the field of 64 for the 2011 NCAA College Baseball Tournament will be announced. We already know the 16 regional host sites: Arizona State, Cal State Fullerton, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Oregon State, North Carolina, Rice, South Carolina, Texas, Texas A&M, TCU, Vanderbilt, Virginia and UCLA.
Eight host teams come from the southeastern section of the United States, four from Texas and four from the West. Just like in college basketball and football, the Southeast is a hotbed of powerful teams.
TCU will host the Fort Worth regional and be the No. 1 seed there. ESPN's Jeremy Mills predicts his field of 64 and has Oklahoma, Dallas Baptist and Oral Roberts to fill out that portion of the bracket. With the way the NCAA selects its field, travel distances are tried to be kept at a minimum. The Atlanta regional needed to fit in Manhattan, but Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia Southern are all projected together there.
New Mexico gained the Mountain West Conference's automatic bid with its victory over TCU in the tournament championship game on Friday. At 20-39, the Lobos will be the No. 4 seed in whichever regional they are placed. Mills projects them to the Arizona State/Tempe regional where they would play the Sun Devils in the opening game.
During the regional phase of the tournament, it is a double-elimination round. That round takes place June 3-6 and will be followed by the Super Regionals on June 10-13 in a best-of-three series. After that, the College World Series begins with eight teams and goes through double-elimination until two teams emerge for a best-of-three championship series.
Tune into ESPN at 10:30 a.m. MT for the NCAA Division I Road to Omaha Selection Show.
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