SEC lands record eight of 16 regional host sites

News D1Baseball Staff - May 28, 2023

ALSO SEE: NCAA Tournament Automatic Bids

The Division I Baseball Committee released the 16 regional hosts, and for the first time ever, half of them will come from one conference: the SEC.

We have projected the SEC to host seven regionals all week, but the committee also deemed South Carolina’s overall body of work worthy of an eighth host spot out of the league, despite the Gamecocks losing their last four weekend series and 11 of their last 14 games overall. South Carolina finished with a modest 17-15 aggregate record in the SEC, but it was propped up by a No. 8 RPI and a 20-18 record against the top 50.

The Gamecocks hosting is a mild surprise given their brutal last month, but it’s far from a total shocker considering their overall metrics and their superb first half. We believed Campbell (which won the Big South regular-season and conference tournament titles, finished with a No. 14 RPI and a 9-5 record against the top 50 — which isn’t easy to do as a member of the 15th-ranked RPI conference) had a strong case, however. We also would have awarded Southern Miss or Boston College a home regional before the Gamecocks. But the committee saw it differently, and that’s all that matters in the end.

The other 15 hosts are as we projected this morning. The ACC lands four hosts, while the Big 12, Missouri Valley, Pac-12 and Sun Belt land one apiece.

The 16 hosts, in alphabetical order:

Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)

Arkansas (Fayetteville, Ark.)

Auburn (Auburn, Ala.)

Clemson (Clemson, S.C.)

Coastal Carolina (Conway, S.C.)

Florida (Gainesville, Fla.)

Indiana State (Terre Haute, Ind.)

Kentucky (Lexington, Ky.)

LSU (Baton Rouge, La.)

Miami (Coral Gables, Fla.)

Oklahoma State (Stillwater, Okla.)

South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.)

Stanford (Stanford, Calif.)

Vanderbilt (Nashville, Tenn.)

Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.)

Wake Forest (Winston-Salem, N.C.)

The full field of 64, including the order of the 16 national seeds, will be released during the selection show starting at noon ET on Monday.