Vanderbilt and Texas fell out of the NCAA Baseball Tournament last weekend and represented two shocking trends with their early exits. Not only did they make history in setting up a super regional round without the top two national seeds for the first time this century, but they also reflected the major struggles that riddled the SEC at large.
Despite the SEC boasting a record number of tournament teams (13), only three are capable of representing college baseball’s most prestigious conference in Omaha. A miserable start to the postseason sent the majority of SEC teams home in short order and opened the door for another league to break through and snap the conference’s five-year national championship streak.
Enter the ACC. Years of knocking on the door may finally lead to a CWS title in 2025 as the conference made a major statement with head-to-head victories against the SEC and a couple of upsets to send five teams to super regionals. That shift in the sport’s power dynamic, plus the general struggles from the tournament’s top 16 teams, are top of mind following the opening weekend of postseason action.
Before turning the page to this weekend’s supers, at look at five key takeaways from regional play:
The ‘No. 1 seed curse’ returned, and it was contagious among national seeds
It took less than 365 days for Vanderbilt to bring the so-called ‘No. 1 seed curse’ back after Tennessee snapped the national championship drought last summer. Tim Corbin’s Commodores have suddenly missed the super regionals in four straight years and twice were bounced from their own regional in that span. Their blazing finish to the regular season and conference tournament did nothing to spark an Omaha run.
Vanderbilt was far from the only national seed to run into trouble over the weekend, and while every tournament brings at least a couple of upsets, this postseason’s surprises were historic. With Texas falling out of the Austin Regional, 2025 became the first season since the tournament expanded in 1999 that the top two national seeds failed to advance beyond the regional round.
Oregon had the most trouble of any top-16 seed despite drawing, on paper, a fairly manageable field for its Eugene Regional. The Ducks remain in search of their first Omaha trip since program reinstatement after their quick two-game stay in the tournament. Georgia, Ole Miss, Clemson and Southern Miss rounded out the seven hosts to fall out of the bracket.
SEC fell way, way short of the hype
Everything in college baseball has run through the SEC for the last half decade, but the conference’s hopes of boasting a sixth consecutive national championship got quite a bit lighter when nine of its tournament-record 13 teams tumbled out of the field over the postseason’s opening weekend. That included four hosts in Vanderbilt, Texas, Georgia and Ole Miss and a couple of highly promising regional visitors in Alabama and Florida, to name just a couple.
In total, the league posted just a .574 win rate with its highly underwhelming 27-20 record. The winning percentage was still better than that of the Big Ten and Big 12, but considering the amount of Omaha contenders in the bracket, anything remotely close to the .500 mark has to be considered a major disappointment.
The bracket’s construction also guarantees that the SEC will comprise less than half of the CWS field. With Arkansas and Tennessee going head-to-head in this weekend’s Fayetteville Super Regional, the most teams the conference can send to Omaha is three. Auburn and LSU are the other SEC flag bearers, and the latter only narrowly reached the supers after it had all kinds of trouble with regional No. 4-seed Little Rock.
ACC made a statement
While the SEC is in the midst of a down postseason, the other half of college baseball’s “big two” excelled in regional play. The ACC not only sent four teams to the super regional round but also went toe-to-toe with the SEC and accounted for two of its eliminations as Louisville and Duke sent Vanderbilt and Georgia packing. Its .688 winning percentage is by far the best of the Power Four this postseason, and it notched an 8-5 record in head-to-head opportunities against the SEC.
There is still work to be done as the ACC seeks to uproot its rival conference from the college baseball driver’s seat and win its first national championship since 2015, but the narrative is already beginning to shift in the league’s favor. Five of its nine tournament teams are on to the supers.
Stock up on these CWS contenders
Welcome to the party Miami, Louisville, Arizona, UTSA, Duke, Murray State and West Virginia. Each of those programs pulled off regional upsets to advance past national seeds and move two wins away from the CWS. The Racers and Hurricanes overcame the odds to the greatest extent of the bunch, too, as a regional No. 4 seed and No. 3 seed, respectively. Momentum and belief abounds for these underdogs, and that is a dangerous thing in the postseason.
The public is somewhat surprisingly higher on LSU now than it was going into the tournament, too, as the Tigers leapfrogged Arkansas on the national championship odds board (per FanDuel Sportsbook) to become the betting favorite to win the CWS. That is despite the Tigers’ close call in the face of elimination.
Also, a hat tip is in order for No. 8 seed Oregon State, which won four straight games in the face of elimination after its shocking Friday night loss. The Beavers outscored their final four regional opponents by a whopping 50-6 margin and are hotter than they were at any point in the regular season. They showed the most mettle of all the national seeds who lost over the weekend, so it is time to buy back into their stock with confidence.
Cinderella is back, and her name is Murray State
Murray State is this year’s Cinderella team. The Racers, now a sparkling 42-14 on the year, won a regional for the first time in their 86-year program history and did so as the fourth seed in a pod that included SEC power Ole Miss. The two head-to-head wins over the Rebels were the biggest highlights of the weekend for the Missouri Valley Conference champions, but they were white hot at the dish in each of their contests and did not score fewer than eight runs in any of their four outings.
Only three teams since tournament expansion in 1999 reached the CWS as regional No. 4 seeds. Murray State is two victories away from adding to that tally, and it would be the second team in the last three years to do so after Oral Roberts made a thrilling run in 2023. The Racers’ path got slightly more favorable, too, with Duke upsetting No. 7 national seed Georgia to set up a super regional matchup between unlikely squads.
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