Sixteen college baseball programs have the opportunity to defend their home field at least one more time in the regional round of the 2024 NCAA baseball tournament.
The top 16 teams in the nation host four-team regionals to kick off the road to the College World Series in Omaha.
The Tennessee Volunteers earned the No. 1 overall seed and four of the top five seeds went to SEC teams.
The Vols and the other top-eight teams can remain at home for the super regional round if they conquer the four-team regional round.
Play across the 16 regional sites lasts from Friday to Monday. The four-team brackets will be played out in a double-elimination format.
The full schedule for each of the 16 regionals can be found here on NCAA.com. All games can be live-streamed on ESPN+. Select games will be broadcast on the ESPN networks.
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All of the top 16 seeds will be expected to come away with super regional berths.
After all, the likes of Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas get to play inside their home ballparks this weekend.
But it does not always work out perfectly for the top 16 seeds on regional weekend. Seven top 16 seeds were upset in last season’s NCAA tournament.
Five of the top eight seeds in the 2023 NCAA tournament went on to the College World Series, so most of the top teams can still get to Omaha.
The North Carolina Tar Heels are the highest national seed under the biggest threat in the regional round.
UNC was drawn alongside the reigning national champion LSU Tigers. LSU was the No. 11 seed in the SEC tournament, but it made it to the final where it lost to Tennessee.
UNC and LSU could meet as early as Saturday and the expectation is they will face off multiple times in Chapel Hill this weekend.
At its best, LSU has the talent to match any one of the top eight seeds, but it did not put everything together until last week at the SEC tournament.
Tennessee should advance out of its regional, but its path to Omaha could get complicated in the super regional round if one of the top two seeds advance out of the Greenville regional.
The East Carolina Pirates are one of the best mid-major programs in the country. Their expected battle with the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, the No. 1 seed last season, should give us one of the tightest regionals.
The most exciting regionals in terms of offense should be in Athens and Stillwater. The Georgia Bulldogs rank third in team home runs and have potential No. 1 overall pick Charlie Condon anchoring their lineup.
Georgia could face its biggest in-state rival, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, in the second game in Athens. Georgia Tech ranks in the top 20 in most team offensive splits.
Stillwater produced some of the highest-scoring regional games in recent years. Three totals of 12 or more occurred at the home of the Oklahoma State Cowboys last year in the regional round. Two years ago, scores of 20-12, 29-15 and 14-10 happened in Stillwater.
Each regional host will start the weekend by playing the No. 4 seed in each region. The No. 2 seed plays the No. 3 seed on Friday at every site. The winners face each other on Saturday with a spot in the regional championship on the line. The losers enter the elimination portion of the double-elimination bracket.
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