Georgia Tech baseball coach Danny Hall figured his team would be sent off to an SEC school for NCAA regional play. For better or worse, he was right.
For the third year in a row, the Yellow Jackets will have to venture into the lair of an SEC powerhouse in their quest to reach their first super regional since playing in the College World Series in 2006. This year, it’s Ole Miss. On Monday, the Jackets received a No. 3 seed in the regional, behind No. 1 Ole Miss, No. 2 Washington and ahead of No. 4 Jacksonville State.
Tech will begin play Friday against Washington at 4 p.m. in Oxford, Miss. The regional is a double-elimination format. The Jackets have been regional runners-up for each of the past six seasons, including at Florida two years ago and Vanderbilt last year.
“I know it’s going to be a tough regional, as they all are,” Hall said.
The Jackets learned their assignment a day after winning their ninth ACC title, when they ambushed the field by winning a play-in game Tuesday to get into pool play, winning their pool and then defeating Maryland 9-4 on Sunday in Greensboro, N.C. They became the first No. 9 seed to win the tournament.
Asked if Tech could benefit from the momentum from the ACC title, reliever Dusty Isaacs responded, “I sure hope so. I think that the guys right now, they’re really believing in themselves and one another.”
Washington will be a test. The Huskies finished in second place in the Pac-12, just two games behind top overall seed Oregon State. They were 7-5 against the four other tournament-bound Pac-12 teams and have three of the top 12 hitters in the Pac-12, including Brian Wolfe (.361).
“I have some scouts that have come through here that have seen a lot of college games that have told me that Washington is really good,” Hall said.
Ole Miss is 14th in the country in batting average (.303) and 17th in ERA (2.76). Tech is 86th in batting average (.279) and 55th in ERA (3.28).
The Rebels won the SEC West, were 25-7 at home this season and enjoy some of the largest fan support in the country. Last year, the Rebels averaged 7,996 at Swayze Field, third-highest in the nation. The past four times that the Rebels have hosted the regional round, they’ve advanced into the super regional.
The winner will face the winner of the Louisiana-Lafayette regional, which also has Mississippi State, San Diego State and Jackson State.
This is Tech’s 28th NCAA bid in the past 30 tournaments. The Jackets were one of seven ACC teams to earn bids, second behind the SEC, along with Clemson, Florida State, Maryland, Miami, North Carolina and Virginia. The Seminoles and Cavaliers earned top-eight national seeds and Miami will also host its own regional.
The SEC’s 10 teams — 16 percent of the field — set a record for most from one conference in the tournament. Florida and LSU earned national seeds, and Vanderbilt and South Carolina along with Ole Miss were given regional sites. The other five teams are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.
