COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With an RPI of 19, the West Virginia baseball team finished juuuuust a bit outside the group of 16 schools selected as NCAA regional hosts Sunday.
Instead, the Mountaineers (34-24) will learn their postseason destination on Monday, when the full field of 64 is revealed. They are presumed to be safely in the bracket for the first time since 1996, projected as No. 2 seed by Baseball America and D1Baseball.com.
MetroNews first reported in April that WVU planned to submit a bid to host a regional at Monongalia County Ballpark. However the Mountaineers were not among the 16 regional sites revealed Sunday night:
Baton Rouge, La., Regional — LSU
Chapel Hill, N.C., Regional — North Carolina
Clemson, S.C., Regional — Clemson
Corvallis, Ore., Regional — Oregon State
Fayetteville, Ark., Regional — Arkansas
Fort Worth, Texas, Regional — TCU
Gainesville, Fla., Regional — Florida
Hattiesburg, Miss., Regional — Southern Mississippi
Houston Regional — Houston
Lexington, Ky., Regional — Kentucky
Long Beach, Calif., Regional — Long Beach State
Louisville, Ky., Regional — Louisville
Lubbock, Texas, Regional — Texas Tech
Stanford, Calif., Regional — Stanford
Tallahassee, Fla., Regional — Florida State
Winston-Salem, N.C., Regional — Wake Forest
Expect West Virginia to wind up at Clemson, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Kentucky or Louisville — with play beginning next Friday or Saturday dependent upon the venue.
While hosting would have been a best-case scenario for Randy Mazey’s club, ending a 21-year postseason drought will be a momentous achievement nonetheless.
The Big 12 is expected to send seven teams to the NCAAs, thanks to Oklahoma State’s stupendous 6-0 run during the last nine days. The Cowboys earned the automatic bid — and swiped one from a bubble team in another league — by beating Texas for the Big 12 tournament title Sunday.
Four West Virginia players were selected to the Big 12 all-tournament team: Jackson Cramer, Darius Hill, Braden Zarbnisky and (who would’ve guessed) Isaiah Kearns.