Notre Dame Is No. 10 Overall Seed In NCAA Tournament, Will Host A Regional
Notre Dame baseball’s postseason path is set.
The Irish (30-11) are the No. 10 national seed in the NCAA tournament and will host the South Bend regional, which begins Friday. They are the regional’s top seed, followed No. 2 UConn (33-18), No. 3 Michigan (27-17) and No. 4 Central Michigan (40-16).
Notre Dame’s first game is Friday against Central Michigan (1 p.m. ET, ESPN3). Michigan and UConn play Friday at 7 p.m. The winners of those two games will play each other. Notre Dame will advance if it wins its first three games. Regionals are double-elimination.
If Notre Dame wins the regional, it will go on the road to play a super-regional. The South Bend regional is paired with the Starkville regional, whose top team is No. 7 national seed Mississippi State (40-15). Super-regionals are a best-of-three series.
The eight super-regional winners advance to the College World Series, which begins June 19.
Notre Dame’s No. 10 overall seed is lower than the final Baseball America and D1 Baseball projections, which had the Irish as the seventh and sixth seeds, respectively.
“You have eight teams in from the ACC, and Notre Dame ran away with the league, I was surprised Notre Dame was not a top-eight national seed,” ESPN baseball analyst Kyle Peterson said on the selection show broadcast. “That one to me was shocking. I thought it was pretty determined Notre Dame would be top-eight.”
This is the first year since 2004 Notre Dame is hosting a regional. The Irish won the ACC Atlantic Division and were the ACC tournament’s top seed, but took a surprising 14-1 loss to Virginia in tournament pool play.
Notre Dame was ranked No. 4 in Baseball America’s latest top 25. Head coach Link Jarrett was the ACC’s Coach of the Year, the first Notre Dame baseball coach to win that honor since Paul Mainieri in 2001 when the team played in the Big East. They last won a conference title in 2006 and last made the College World Series in 2002. In Jarrett’s second season, they became a nationally relevant team.
“The community and campus have embraced what we’re doing all year,” Jarrett said on the broadcast. “The students were able to come to our events, and we finally got to play a home game, which didn’t happen last year. I looked over and our student section is packed. I’ve had so many people in the community who have reached out who are hungry to see Notre Dame baseball back on the national stage.”
UConn (Big East) and Central Michigan (Mid-American) earned automatic tournament bids by winning their conferences. Michigan was one of the last four teams in the field, per the selection committee. Notre Dame and Central Michigan played once this season, an 8-4 Irish home win on April 13.
The NCAA announced earlier in May it will allow 100 percent capacity for regionals, if state and local guidelines support it.
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