UCLA earns No. 1 seed for NCAA baseball tournament ahead of offensive juggernaut Georgia Tech
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — UCLA was rewarded Monday for its dominant wire-to-wire run through the regular season with the No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.
The tournament opens Friday with 16 double-elimination regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 12.
The Bruins (51-6), who swept the Big Ten Conference regular-season and tournament titles, were No. 1 by Baseball America in each of its weekly rankings since the preseason and have the most wins entering regionals since Tennessee came in with 53 in 2022.
Their ace, Logan Reddeman, and closer, Ethan Hawk, are among the best in the nation and lead a staff that has a 3.31 ERA. Shortstop Roch Cholowsky is widely projected to be the No. 1 pick in the Major League Baseball amateur draft and he, Will Gasparino and Big Ten Tournament MVP Mulivai Levu have combined for 57 homers.
Georgia Tech (48-9), which swept the Atlantic Coast Conference championships, features the nation's most prodigious offense. The Yellow Jackets lead Division I in scoring (10.8 runs per game), batting average (.358) and slugging (.636). Jarren Advincula is batting .431 to rank second nationally and Vahn Lackey is sixth at .410.
The national seeds following UCLA and Georgia Tech are Georgia (46-12), Auburn (38-19), North Carolina (45-11-1), Texas (40-13), Alabama (37-19) and Florida (39-19). Top-eight national seeds, if they win their regional, are assured of hosting a super regional.
Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Southern Mississippi (44-15), Florida State (38-17), Oregon (40-16), Texas A&M (39-14), Nebraska (42-15), Mississippi State (40-17), Kansas (42-16) and West Virginia (39-14).
LSU, the 2025 national champion, became the seventh program to win the title and not make a regional the following year since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999. The others were Mississippi (2022 title), Mississippi State (2021), Coastal Carolina (2016), UCLA (2013), Arizona (2012) and Oregon State (2007).
___
AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
