The Journey Starts Here: Beavers Selected as 3 Seed in The Forth Worth Regional

View the full NCAA Bracket here. 

First of all, Congratulations to the Oregon State Beavers baseball team. It was a good, at times frustrating season, but the team was resilient, and got a big series win at Stanford right when they needed it. 

Second of all, let's relive some of the highlights. RVM will recap the entire regular season in a series of posts starting later today.

--The Beavers won their first three series' in Pac-10 play against Oregon, California, and Arizona.

--The Beavers got their first regular season sweep of a Pac-10 opponent since sweeping Washington State in 2006 with an 11-inning walk-off victory over California on April 5. The Beavers found themselves leading 3-0 in the early goings of that game, but Cal rallied all the way back to take a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the eleventh. Needing to score a run to win, the Beavers put two on the board, clinching the game on Ryan Ortiz's bases loaded base hit to left center. 

--After Mike Leake put a kibosh on the Beavers offense for eight innings in the Beavers' series opener with ASU on May 1, the Beavers rallied in Games 2 and 3 to defeat then-No.3 Arizona State in a weekend series. The Sun Devils, who will host a NCAA Regional, finished the season at 44-12 overall, and 21-6 in Pac-10 play. The series loss to the Beavers was their only series loss, excluding the two games they dropped to Arkansas, during the season. 

--The Beavers found themselves in second place in the Pac-10 standings at several points throughout the season, including after defeating Cal on April 5, and after beating Washington in Safeco Field on May 8. 

--Oregon State ended the year at 20-5 in non-conference play. 

--After 28 years without baseball, the University of Oregon went 1-5 against the Beavers in their inaugural year of baseball since the eighties. Oregon State finished the season with an overall score of 43-11 against the Ducks. 

Third, lets take a look ahead: 

The Fort Worth Regional looks like this:

(1) TCU

(2) Texas A&M

(3) Oregon State

(4) Wright State

We'll get all sabermetric with it as the weak wears on, but here are my initial thoughts: There's been some conversation in the Open Thread about heat and humididy. Obviously, with two teams from Texas and another team from Ohio, the Oregon team is the only west coast team in the regional. The upcoming weather forecast:

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Obviously, the key for the Beavers is to simply get into the tournament. We've seen in the past that it doesn't matter who the opponent is: this team will rise to the occasion. 

The winner of the Fort Worth regional will play the winner of the Austin Regional in a Super Regional matchup, of which Texas is the #1 seed. However, if a team like Texas State, Boston College, or Army were to pull an upset, it could make for an interesting Super Regional, much like what happened to the Beavers when Vanderbilt fell to Michigan in 2007. 

--Jake (jake.buildingthedam@gmail.com)