It may seem like the end of college baseball’s regular season is a long way off, but it’s actually less than five weeks away. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to review how the postseason works, especially if you’re new to the sport.
Two Stages of the Same Event
The regular season is followed by the NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament and the Men’s College World Series (MCWS). Although they are separated by name and relevance, they are just stages of the same tournament. In layman’s terms, the MCWS is nothing more than the final and superiod stage of the NCAA Tournament.
This stage begins on June 13 with the 64-team bracket. Thirty of those teams qualify by winning their respective conferences, while the other 34 are at-large bids determined by the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee based on several metrics.
The same committee ranks all teams from 1 to 64, with the top 16 receiving the so-called ‘national seeds’ that entitle them to host one of 16 regional events. These events feature four teams in each bracket that compete in a double-elimination system to determine the champion of each Regional.
The 16 regional champions advance to the Super Regionals, where they compete in a best-of-three series. The eight winners advance to the MCWS, which will be played at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska.
The MCWS will also be played on a double-elimination basis to produce the two teams that will play for the title in the MCWS Finals, which will be played in a best-of-three series.
The defending national champions are the Tennessee Volunteers, who defeated Texas A&M in the 2024 MCWS Finals. The Vols are all but guaranteed a spot in this season’s round of 64, as they currently sit at No. 6 in the NCAA rankings.
KEEP READING: 7 Best College Baseball Teams That Didn’t Win the College World Series
This is the top 25 for the current Division I college baseball season (through April 20):
- Texas
- Clemson
- Oregon State
- Florida State
- Arkansas
- Tennessee
- LSU
- North Carolina
- Vanderbilt
- Georgia
- Auburn
- UC Irvine
- Oregon
- Oklahoma
- UCLA
- Arizona
- West Virginia
- Alabama
- Louisville
- Troy
- Coastal Carolina
- Southern Miss
- Ole Miss
- Georgia Tech
- NC State
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