For the past three months, 308 Division I baseball teams have been competing for the chance to participate in the NCAA tournament. This weekend, just 64 schools remain as regional play begins, marking the starting point on the road to Omaha and the Men’s College World Series. Four-team double-elimination brackets at 16 campus venues across the nation will unfold starting Friday, with the winning teams advancing to super-regionals next weekend — those are best-of-three series — that will determine the eight teams competing for a championship in June.
Here’s a look at the four biggest storylines in this year’s tournament, featuring the players and teams that will define this year’s road to Omaha.
Can UCLA complete the season as the No. 1 team?
Led by star junior shortstop Roch Cholowsky, the Bruins held firm as the No. 1 team in the country from start to finish of the regular season, just as Cholowsky maintained his status as the top prospect in July’s MLB Draft. This kind of staying power through the duration of an unpredictable and chaotic college season is incredibly rare for a team or a player, but Cholowsky delivered another fantastic campaign while the Bruins won every weekend series en route to a gaudy 28-2 conference record and the Big Ten tournament crown.
All along, the regular season felt like a lengthy prelude to a more pressing question: Can they finish the job and claim the school’s second national championship and first since 2013? The Bruins made it to Omaha last year with a mostly underclass roster, which set the stage for their title pursuit in 2026 with so many key players returning and another wave of talent arriving via the transfer portal. They’ve lived up to the hype so far, but the competition promises to increase as the postseason progresses.
The Bruins’ first challenge will be No. 4 seed Saint Mary’s, which ranks third nationally with a .333 team batting average. Within the L.A. regional, No. 2 and No. 3 seeds Virginia Tech and Cal Poly have the caliber of talent to push UCLA as well. After that comes a potential super-regional matchup with the winner of the Morgantown regional, which could be the host West Virginia Mountaineers or a battle-tested power conference foe in Wake Forest or Kentucky. Any slip-up before Omaha would be considered a massive disappointment for UCLA, and expectations will remain lofty for their entire tournament run.
The biggest wild card for the Bruins is the availability and effectiveness of ace right-hander Logan Reddemann, who has not pitched since April 17 due to arm fatigue. UCLA has substantial pitching depth beyond him, but most teams with championship aspirations have a no-doubt frontline starter to lean on come tournament time. Reddemann won’t be available this weekend but could return to the rotation if UCLA advances. With or without him, the pressure will be on the Bruins to demonstrate that they are indeed one of the truly great teams in college baseball history.
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Is Georgia Tech actually the favorite?
While UCLA was stampeding through the Big Ten without much trouble, Georgia Tech was enjoying similar success against far more potent competition in the ACC. The Yellow Jackets weren’t quite as flawless, dropping one weekend series at No. 5 overall seed North Carolina in mid-April, but they still finished 25-5 (three games ahead of the Tar Heels in the conference standings) and took down UNC in the championship to claim the ACC tournament crown.
This tremendous Tech run has happened under first-year head coach James Ramsey, who took over for Danny Hall, who had been at the helm since 1994 and retired after last season. Ramsey had been a top assistant and recruiting coordinator for the Yellow Jackets since 2019, and he was tabbed to take over and help elevate the program to new heights. Georgia Tech has been a regular in regionals for years but hasn’t been to Omaha since 2006 and has never won a national championship.
With a ridiculously stacked position-player group headlined by two potential top-10 draft picks in catcher Vahn Lackey and center fielder Drew Burress, the Yellow Jackets feature one of the most prolific offenses in modern college baseball history. As a team, they hit a combined .358/.470/.636 across 57 games this spring. That eye-popping amount of collective offensive firepower might be enough to fuel an Omaha run on its own, but the pitching staff — which has let down so many quality Yellow Jackets teams over the years — will need to step up as the competition increases if Tech wants to emerge as the national champion.
Will the SEC continue its championship streak?
For as dominant as UCLA and Georgia Tech have been all season, to win the title, either would need to overcome recent history suggesting that the national champion will most likely emerge from the Southeastern Conference. The SEC has produced the past six title winners, with Oregon State the most recent non-SEC team to hoist the trophy back in 2018, when the Beavers defeated Arkansas (from the SEC, of course) in the championship series. Since then, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, LSU (twice) and Tennessee have won it all, with runner-up showings from Florida and Texas A&M as well.
This astonishing level of SEC dominance in Omaha speaks to the quality of talent in the conference relative to the rest of the country, as well as the sheer number of teams the SEC regularly sends to the tournament, giving the conference more bites at the apple on an annual basis. That’s true again this year, as 12 of the 16 teams in the SEC are in the postseason field. Remarkably, that doesn’t include LSU, which won two of the past three national championships, or Vanderbilt, which had a Div. I-best 19-year streak of qualifying for the tournament. Both teams had uncharacteristically poor seasons, failing to earn at-large bids like the majority of their conference peers.
So, if the SEC is going to win a seventh straight national championship, who are the most promising contenders? As always, there are several heavyweights to choose from, including seven teams hosting regionals this weekend as top-16 national seeds: No. 3 Georgia, No. 4 Auburn, No. 6 Texas, No. 7 Alabama, No. 8 Florida, No. 12 Texas A&M and No. 14 Mississippi State. Georgia, with a deep roster made up almost entirely of transfers, has been the most consistent club all spring, finishing with by far the best conference record at 23-7 before storming through the conference tournament. The Bulldogs’ best player is Daniel Jackson, an athletic catcher with 25 homers and 27 steals; he should be a first- or second-round pick come July.
If you like offense, Georgia (leads Div. I in home runs with 149 through 58 games) and Texas A&M (.988 team OPS) are the SEC squads to monitor. On the pitching side, Auburn’s 3.47 ERA is bested nationally by only Oregon State, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara — West Coast schools that didn’t face nearly the offensive opposition that Auburn had to deal with. Texas and Mississippi State are more balanced clubs across the board, with both star power in the lineup and serious stuff on the mound. Among the non-hosts, Ole Miss has a championship-level pitching staff and could be poised to make a deep run. Don’t be surprised if Omaha is overflowing with SEC representation yet again.
Kansas is … a baseball school?
One of the best features of the Division I baseball tournament is that the first two rounds take place on campus, offering an excellent variety of environments that amplify the high-stakes on-field action. Some of these venues are used to hosting regional play because of how consistently good their programs are; that includes the usual SEC and ACC powerhouses but also mid-major staples such as Southern Miss, which is hosting this weekend for the fourth time in the past decade. These classic sites always deliver lively atmospheres for players and fans to enjoy.
But while some campuses have become almost annual destinations for the college baseball postseason, it’s even more exciting when programs rise up to earn hosting duties unexpectedly, giving their fan base the chance to create a new playoff environment of their own. The best examples this year can be found in the heartland, where Nebraska and Kansas are slated to host two of the most compelling regionals in the field.
The Cornhuskers have some rich baseball history, having made three trips to nearby Omaha at the beginning of the century (2001, 2002, 2005), but they haven’t hosted a regional since 2008. Head coach Will Bolt played at Nebraska from 1999 to 2002, so he understands how special it can be when Huskers baseball is humming. Lincoln should be an absolute party all weekend, especially with two formidable foes in Ole Miss and Arizona State arriving as the No. 2 and No. 3 seed, plus the ultimate underdog South Dakota State, Summit League champion despite a 24-31 record, as the No. 4.
Meanwhile, Kansas is hosting in Lawrence for the very first time. The Jayhawks have reached the College World Series once, back in 1993, and have qualified for regionals only four times in the subsequent three decades. Head coach Dan Fitzgerald, now in his fourth season at the helm, has rejuvenated the program with a fascinating collection of junior-college transfers and overlooked gems. After reaching the tournament last season but going winless at the Fayetteville regional, the Jayhawks leveled up this spring and embarked on a dominant run through the Big 12, claiming both the regular-season and conference tournament titles.
Hoglund Ballpark in Lawrence typically holds around 3,000 fans, but to increase capacity for the postseason, Kansas replaced the left-field wall with a see-through fence enabling a new viewing section beyond the outfield labeled “The Backyard.” This kind of creativity exemplifies a program embracing the special circumstances and doing its best to maximize the experience for both players and fans.
Advancing to supers won’t be easy for the Jayhawks. Like the Huskers, Kansas will welcome very talented No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in Arkansas and Missouri State, while Northeastern has the best record of any No. 4 seed at 38-20. But no matter the result for the home team, the Lawrence regional promises to be a must-watch this weekend. Buckle up.
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