Just In Time For College Baseball Postseason, Da' Bo Is Back With More Bites For Ya'

Eight SEC Teams Hosting NCAA Regionals; Eight Big 12 Schools Receive Invites;

2025 NCAA DI Baseball Championship Taking Interesting Shape

DALLAS – ESPN commentators hit it squarely on the head in their pre-NCAA Baseball Regional Selection Show commentary Monday morning.

There definitely is not a “super team” entering the 2025 competition (the 26th year since the Division I field waws expanded from 48 to 64 teams) as a prohibitive favorite, and five different schools – all from the Southeastern Conference – have been ranked No. 1 nationally in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers polls since preseason.

In fact, the consensus pre-2025 No. 1, Texas A&M, failed to make the NCAA field this week after some midseason slippage, failure to win the SEC postseason tourney and a final Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) of No. 50 – plus, a rugged three-game sweep over the Aggies by a Missouri team entering the SEC series with 24 consecutive conference setbacks.

That didn’t hinder the rest of the conference from immense success, though, as a record eight SEC crews gained NCAA Regional host roles and 13 squads overall – exceptions were A&M, South Carolina and Mizzou – were on the 64-team board.

That was five more than a likely underrated Big 12 Conference, which did not yield a regional host but recorded eight invitations (the 22nd time in 28 seasons that the conference has had five or more bids even during the times of nine baseball-playing members from 2012-23). Experts feel the Big 12 might do some major damage to their right hosts beginning Friday.

And to reiterate the idea of an evenly-matched tourney, No. 1 overall NCAA seed Vanderbilt is No. 3 in this week’s NCBW Top 25 while the Commodores are No. 4 in the USA Today Coaches poll behind No. 1 North Carolina. LSU remains No. 1 in the NCBWA survey for the third consecutive week.

Some of the more intriguing regionals find Florida State, which lost a home series to North Carolina in the final week of Atlantic Coast Conference activity and is 6-4 in its last 10 outings, hosting a hot Bethune-Cookman crew from the Southwestern Athletic Conference and then facing either Mississippi State of the SEC or CAA titlist Northeastern holding the most victories of any DI school nationally at 48-9 and riding a NCAA-best winning streak of 27 games before heading to Tallahassee.

Auburn, a bit of a surprise among the regional hosts, drew Atlantic Sun Conference winner Stetson, always-potent NC State of the ACC and Central Connecticut (Northeast Conference winner and AU’s first round opponent) in the Auburn Regional.

Big 12 tourney champ Arizona, which won the 2024 Pac-12 Conference crown and then skidded to 0-2 in the Tucson Regional last season, has to travel to familiar territory to the Eugene Regional with host and now Big Ten Conference power Oregon (formerly of the Pac-12), capable Cal Poly and Utah Valley.

Vanderbilt did not get the easiest host’s role either with its field consisting of a Louisville unit that downed Vandy 5-4 earlier this month, Horizon League winner Wright State and an East Tennessee State power with the Southern Conference trophy tucked away and multiple weeks of Top 25 votes in the NCBWA survey.

Two other schools also face unique circumstances. DBU makes its school-record 11th consecutive NCAA appearance after rising all the way from the NAIA to NCAA Division II to DI over the course of the last 30 years and has to travel to LSU. Perennial NCAA FCS power North Dakota State (winner of nine of the last 14 seasons) comes out of the Summit League as victor and makes its third NCAA postseason baseball appearance in Division I at Arkansas.

2025 NCAA Baseball Committee chair Jay Artigues, director of athletics at Southeastern Louisiana and a four-year member of the diamond committee, pointed out the difficulty of choosing the 35 at-large teams after thr 29 conference champions in DI earned automatic bids.

“The unbalanced schedules of these big conferences made it really tough to judge some of the at-large teams,” he said on the NCAA Selection Show on ESPN. “This was a difficult task, and there were a lot of deserving teams.”

In fact, Artigues’ integrity as chair of selections was demonstrated by the revelation of the first four teams out of the bracket. Southeastern Louisiana of the Southland Conference (overcome by first-time NCAA entry Houston Christian in the SLC tourney), highly-rated Troy of the Sun Belt Conference, Big East mainstay Connecticut, and 2015 NCAA winner and ACC challenger Virginia just missed berths and left many observers wondering if a four-team play-in arrangement similar to NCAA Division men’s and women’s basketball might be a future possibility.

Fasten your seat belt, fans – there will be many unexpected developments on the national diamonds beginning Friday as defending first-time NCAA champ Tennessee (the sixth SEC team to capture the flag in the last seven years) starts its bid for a repeat against Knoxville Regional visitors Cincinnati, Miami (Ohio) and Wake Forest.

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Bo Carter is the Executive Director of the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) and is a long time professional in sports media and information. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and has plied his trade in the Southeastern Conference, the Southwest Conference, and the Big 12 Conference. In addition to his NCBWA duties, he also serves as a consultant and columnist for the National Football Foundation. Follow the NCBWA, which produces ranking polls for D1, D2, and D3, as well as naming All America teams at both the D1 and D2 levels and the Dick Howser Trophy (presented each year in Omaha at the Men’s College World Series) at @NCBWA. If you’re a college baseball fan, you don’t have to be media to be a member, check them out at ncbwa.com and join today!