NCAA baseball changes to postseason tournament play would make sense

Matt Zemek
 |  Trojans Wire

NCAA baseball is something a lot of USC Trojans care about. The Trojans do have 12 NCAA championships, five more than second-place LSU. USC is college baseball royalty, and the Trojans got a taste of the big time once again this season by returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2015. It is worth wondering: Should the NCAA re-seed its postseason tournament before the Super Regionals and College World Series? College Sports Wire took a look at this question:

“Here’s just one example out of several: The UTSA-UCLA winner (Los Angeles Super Regional) plays the Murray State-Duke winner (Durham Super Regional) in Game 1 for those two teams at the College World Series. That’s how the bracket was mapped out. UCLA and Texas were the national seeds, but UTSA knocked off Texas to make UCLA a Super Regional host. Murray State defeated Ole Miss on the road at the Oxford Regional, which is why Duke is hosting the Super Regional. That cluster of teams was always grouped together. Even though the top national seeds — Texas and Ole Miss — are now out of that section of the bracket, the other teams in that section still play each other. UCLA is the No. 15 national seed but is the highest seed in that section.

“If NCAA baseball re-seeded teams after the regionals and going into both the Super Regionals and College World Series, we wouldn’t have imbalanced brackets.”

UCLA got a smooth ride in the bracket because of the lack of re-seeding. Maybe that will get the attention of USC fans on this issue. That point aside, USC hopes to play in a Super Regional next year and take the next step on the road back to college baseball prominence.