The Cal State Fullerton baseball team knew it would see its name during the NCAA tournament selection show on Monday morning.
USC and UC Irvine expected to see their names too, but both teams were left out of the 64-team field, passed over for at-large berths.
The Titans (31-22), who clinched the Big West Conference’s automatic berth on Friday night, are the third seed in the four-team Stanford Regional. Fullerton, back in postseason play for the first time since 2018, will face second-seeded Texas A&M (36-25) on Friday (7 p.m., ESPN2).
Stanford (38-16) is the No. 8 national seed and will open play in the double-elimination regional against San Jose State (31-25) on Friday at 2 p.m.
Stanford is one of five Pac-12 teams in the field, but USC (34-23-1) being left out was a surprise to many since assorted bracketology projections had the Trojans in the field.
USC – which hoped to make its first postseason trip since 2015 and just its second appearance since 2005 – failed to make it out of its pool in the Pac-12 Tournament last week in Las Vegas, defeating UCLA, 6-4, before losing to Washington, 8-3, to get knocked out. The Trojans went 17-13 in Pac-12 play during the regular season with an RPI of No. 53, but their nonconference strength of schedule (No. 143) and a non-conference RPI of 100 appear to be what scuttled their hopes. The Trojans were also just 5-15-1 against Quad-1 teams.
USC made great strides under first-year coach Andy Stankiewicz, who inherited a program that was 25-28 overall and 8-22 in Pac-12 play in 2022, but the snub surely stings following the turnaround season.
UCI was another team that bracketologists projected would be in the field, but the Anteaters were left out despite their 38-17 overall record, a 19-11 mark in Big West play and an RPI of No. 49. UCI had a better nonconference strength of schedule (No. 83) and nonconference RPI (No. 29) than USC and had an 18-11 record against Quad-2 opponents and an 0-1 mark in Quad-1 games.
Wake Forest, which leads the nation in wins and has not lost consecutive games, was named the No. 1 overall seed, and the SEC had a record-tying 10 teams in the field and a record eight of them will host regionals.
The winners of the 16 regionals will advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha.
The top eight national seeds are assured of hosting super regionals if they win their regionals.
“To be the No. 1 national seed is a tremendous accomplishment for our program,” Wake Forest coach Tom Walter said. “To do that, you have to demonstrate both consistency and toughness. We have battled through four season-ending injuries on the mound, four temporary injuries to key position players and rebounded quickly from tough losses.”
Wake Forest opens the tournament Friday against George Mason (34-25). Maryland (41-19) and Northeastern (44-14) also are in the Winston-Salem Regional.
The national seeds following Wake Forest are Florida (44-14), Arkansas (41-16), Clemson (43-17), LSU (43-15), Vanderbilt (41-18), Virginia (45-12) and Stanford (38-16).
Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Miami (40-19), Coastal Carolina (39-19), Oklahoma State (41-18), Kentucky (36-18), Auburn (34-21-1), Indiana State (42-15), South Carolina (39-19) and Alabama (40-19).
The last four teams to get bids, in alphabetical order, were Arizona (33-24), Louisiana (40-22), Oklahoma (31-26) and Troy (39-20). The first four out were Arizona State (32-23), Kansas State (35-24), Kent State (42-16) and UCI.
The SEC matched the record it set in 2014 with 10 teams making the tournament. The ACC has eight teams in the field, the Big 12 has six and the Pac-12 has five.
Division I Baseball Committee chairman John Cohen, the Auburn athletic director, acknowledged eight SEC hosts is “a big number” but noted that league teams combined to win 81.1% of their nonconference games.
“There was no discussion about (how) we need this many teams from the SEC or there’s too many or not enough,” Cohen said. “We do not do that with any leagues. No one is keeping a running total because if you are, you’re not picking the best teams.”
Other notes about the tournament:
• Vanderbilt has the longest active streak with its 17th consecutive appearance. Texas is in the tournament for a record 62nd time. Florida State (23-31) saw its record-tying streak of regional appearances end at 44.
• Tulane (19-40), which won the American Athletic Conference Tournament as the No. 7 seed, has the most losses of any team to ever make the national tournament. The Green Wave’s reward is a spot in the Baton Rouge Regional and an opening game against LSU.
• Arizona, at 12-18 in Pac-12 play, has the worst conference record of any team selected to the field since 2009.
• Summit League champion Oral Roberts is on the longest win streak in the nation, at 18 games. Clemson has won 16 in a row.
• Connecticut is in a regional for a fifth straight time for the first time since the 1950s.
• There are no teams making their first appearances, but Penn is in for the first time since 1995, Santa Clara for the first time since 1997 and San Jose State for the first time since 2002.
• Cohen said the committee has discussed ways to improve the RPI, one of the main tools used to evaluate teams. Cohen specifically wants to tweak the road record metric to give additional credit to teams that must travel long distances such as cold-weather teams going to the South or West for early season games.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
