Arizona among 16 host sites for NCAA baseball tournament regionals, GCU in Tucson regional

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Arizona and Oregon State will represent the Pac-12 as regional host sites for the NCAA Division I baseball tournament.

On Monday, the field for the Tucson regional which begins Friday was announced, including an in-state foe and future in-conference foe for Arizona between Grand Canyon, West Virginia and Dallas Baptist.

Arizona takes on GCU Friday at 6 p.m. on ESPN+.

The Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference each had five schools selected as host sites.

All 16 regional hosts announced by the Division I Baseball Committee locked up spots in the national tournament. The rest of the 64-team field and first-round matchups will be unveiled Monday.

Clemson (41-14), Florida State (42-15), North Carolina State (33-20), North Carolina (42-13) and Virginia (41-15) led the way for the ACC as hosts for the four-team, double-elimination regionals. It’s the 36th time Florida State is hosting, the most in NCAA Division I history.

Tennessee (50-11), which won the SEC Tournament and will host a regional, is expected to be the No. 1 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament. Arkansas (43-14), Georgia (39-15), Kentucky (40-14) and Texas A&M (44-13) were also selected as host sites from the SEC.

Also hosting regionals scheduled from Friday through next Monday are: Oklahoma (37-19) — for the first time since 2010 — and Oklahoma State (40-17) from the Big 12; Arizona (36-21) and Oregon State (42-14) from the Pac-12; East Carolina (43-15) from the American Athletic Conference; and UC Santa Barbara (42-12) from the Big West.

It’s the second time UC Santa Barbara is hosting a regional, but the first on campus after it hosted at a neutral site at Lake Elsinore in 2015.

The 16 regional winners advance to the best-of-three super regionals, and those eight winners go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, beginning June 14.