Oregon St. is headed to Dallas, as the #2 seen in the Dallas Baptist Regional for the NCAA Baseball Tournament. The Beavers will play the Texas Longhorns Friday at 1:30 PM CDT (11:30 AM PDT), on ESPN3.
It's the 7th year in a row the Beavers have made the tournament, and 10th trip in 11 years, after making only 6 trips in history prior to the recent run. Oregon St. has only ever met Texas once, in 1952, when the Longhorns eliminated the Beavers in the NCAA Tournament with an 10-1 win.
Dallas Baptist was the 12th overall seed, and the Dallas Regional matches up with the Miami Regional in the Super Regional round.
Virginia Commonwealth (VCU) rounds out the Dallas region.
Oregon St. (38-16-1, 19-10-1), the second place finisher in the Pac-12, which got only 1 hosting assignment, UCLA, as the #1 seed in a surprise over LSU, will face the Big XII's automatic qualifier and Tournament winner in Texas.
The Longhorns (30-25, 11-13), finished 5th in the Big XII, but beat Oklahoma St. 6-3 the highest non-national seed in the Big XII Tournament championship game. Texas finished the season with a drive to make the postseason, mostly at Baylor's expense. The Longhorns beat the Bears twice in a row in the conference tournament, after taking 2 of 3 in the last series of their regular season, which got 21 year Baylor coach Steve Smith, the winningest coach in Baylor history in any sport, fired.
Dallas Baptist, a former foe of the Beavers in the NCAA Tournament, got 1 of 2 hosting slots awarded to the Missouri Valley Conference, along with 8th overall seed Missouri St., the last national seed.
The Patriots (43-13, 15-6) finished second in the MVC behind Missouri St., who took the regular season series 2-1. Dallas Baptist went 2-2 in the MVC tournament, and was eliminated after losing 3-1 to Bradley, a team they had taken 2 of 3 games from in the regular season. Bradley, who received the #2 seed in the Louisville regional, lost to Missouri St. 5-2 in the MVC tournament title game.
Virginia Commonwealth (37-22, 14-10) enters the NCAA Tournament on a 10 game winning streak, and claimed the 13 member Atlantic 10's automatic )and only) bid by claiming the conference tournament with back to back 8-2 and 5-3 wins over Rhode Island. The Rams finished in a tie for 4th in the regular season, with Davidson, whom they didn't play until beating them 11-0 in the conference tournament.
The other members of the Miami (Coral Gables) regional, which the Dallas regional winner will meet, include East Carolina, Columbia, and Florida International.
Joining UCLA will be Ole Miss, Maryland and Cal St. Bakersfield, and that region is paired with the Lake Elsinore Regional, hosted by UC-Santa Barbara (3 hours from campus). That's where USC wound up as a 2 seed, joining Virginia and San Diego St.
The other regional in the west in the Fullerton Regional, which is where Arizona St. is the 2 seed, and will face Clemson first. Pepperdine is Fullerton St.'s first opponent.
Oregon, which as noted is headed to Springfield, MO, and the Missouri St. regional, will first face Iowa, while the Bears and Canisus round out that region.
The other team from the west to make the tournament is California. The Bears are the 3 seed in the College Station regional, and will face Coastal Carolina Friday. Texas A&M, the biggest surprise as a non-national seed hosts Texas Southern in the other half of that bracket.
Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com