Defending champ Gators top seed in NCAA tournament
OMAHA, Neb. — Losses in six of its last seven games didn’t diminish defending national champion Florida’s overall body of work when it came to seeding the NCAA baseball tournament.
The Gators (42-17) are No. 1, and there never was much doubt, NCAA Division I Baseball Committee chairman Ray Tanner said Monday after the 64-team field was unveiled.
Kevin O’Sullivan’s program is the first to earn the No. 1 overall seed three times since the tournament went to its current structure in 1999. The Gators also were top seeds in 2012 and 2016.
“They were incredible the majority of the season and didn’t finish strong,” said Tanner, athletic director at South Carolina. “As we were finishing up our data last week before coming to Indianapolis, I was curious to see if they were going to be a clear-cut (choice) once we got into the committee room, and they continued to be, despite not finishing the way coach O’Sullivan would have wanted them to finish. They clearly were the No. 1 seed with all the metrics considered.”
Play begins Friday in 16 regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha.
The NCAA seeded 16 teams for the first time. There had been eight seeds previously.
Stanford (44-10) is the No. 2 seed, followed by Oregon State (44-10-1), Mississippi (46-15), Arkansas (39-18), North Carolina (38-18), Florida State (43-17) and Georgia (37-19).
Seeds nine through 16 are Texas Tech (39-17), Clemson (45-14), Stetson (45-11), East Carolina (43-16), Texas (37-20), Minnesota (41-13), Coastal Carolina (42-17) and North Carolina State (40-16).
Florida is the only team to earn a national seed in each of the last five seasons.
“Obviously, we haven’t played well lately, but coming home and having a full week of practice before the regional will certainly help,” O’Sullivan said. “We’ll try to get healthy ahead of the weekend and get some guys back on track before we play Columbia on Friday. At the end of the day, everybody has a clean slate now, and our guys will be as motivated as anyone to show everyone how good they are.”
Florida State, at 41 appearances in a row, has the longest active streak, but no national championships to show for them.
“For me to say a national championship isn’t important is as dumb a thing as anybody can say. Darn right it’s important,” said Seminoles coach Mike Martin, whose 1,987 career wins are an NCAA record. The last four teams to make the field were Dallas Baptist (40-19), Northeastern (36-19), Oklahoma State (29-24-1) and Troy (41-19). The first four out were Arizona (34-22), Illinois (33-20), Kentucky (34-22) and Central Florida (35-21).
Perhaps the biggest surprise was Kentucky’s exclusion and Northeastern’s inclusion.
Notable teams not in the field are Rice (26-31-2), which had made 23 straight appearances, and Virginia (29-25), which had made 14 in a row. TCU (33-23), which lost to Baylor in the Big 12 final, also will stay home after reaching the College World Series the last four years.
PHOENIX — Finally, there were hits up and down the lineup from the Arizona Diamondbacks and the result, as manager Torey Lovullo put it, was “a nice, comfortable type of a win that we haven’t had in a while.”
Nick Ahmed, Chris Owings and John Ryan Murphy each homered as Arizona’s offense — slumbering for nearly all of May — came alive for a 12-5 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Monday, just the Diamondbacks’ third win in their last 18 games.
“I think this is just the game we all needed,” Owings said, “to get out there and get everybody on the bases, get everybody swinging the bat. I felt like we had really good at-bats today.”
Ahmed and Owings each had a three-run home run in the opener of a six-game homestand after Arizona staggered back from a 1-8 road trip. Murphy added a solo shot.
The Reds outhit the Diamondbacks 16-11 but stranded nine.
“We were getting a lot of hits today,” Cincinnati interim manager Jim Riggleman said, “but they were hitting homers. That was the story of the day really.”
Ahmed and Murphy homered off Homer Bailey (1-7), who allowed eight runs, six earned, on six hits in four innings. The Reds are 1-11 in games Bailey has started.
Matt Koch (3-3) went five innings, giving up five runs on 11 hits for Arizona. Eugenio Suarez had four hits for the Reds, including an RBI double.
The Diamondbacks, in their highest-scoring game of the season, were aided by three Cincinnati errors.
The biggest was a miscue by shortstop Jose Peraza on a made-to-order inningending double play. That cleared the way for Arizona’s four-run second in- ning.
Daniel Descalso led off the second with a triple to the right field gap before Murphy bounced out to third. Owings walked and Socrates Brito bounced one to Peraza, who was standing a couple of steps from second base. But the ball glanced off the glove and then the side of Peraza’s head, allowing Descalso to score and tie it 1-1. The next batter, Ahmed, homered on an 0-2 pitch into the left field seats to make it 4-1.
“We caught a break,” Lovullo said, ‘ ‘and I want to make a big point of that because we haven’t gotten a lot of breaks. I’m not up here whining about it. I just know that teams have been playing their best against us and we’ve suffered. Today we took advantage of a really key mistake on defense that was made a capitalized with the big threerun home run.”
The four runs were the most in an inning for the Diamondbacks since they got five in the third against the Phillies on April 26.
Murphy’s leadoff homer made it 5-1 in the fourth, and Owings reached on third baseman Suarez’s fielding error. Brito singled and Ahmed hit a hard grounder to third. Suarez threw to second for the force as Owings raced for home and scored ahead second baseman Scooter Gennett’s errant throw.
Cincinnati rallied to make it 6-5 with four runs in the fifth. Adam Duvall’s three-run double cut the lead to 6-5. The Reds sent the tying run home from second when Bailey grounded the ball off the third-baseman’s glove into short left field, but shortstop Ahmed threw Duvall out at the plate, the catcher Murphy applying the tag to end inning.
“That was a great play,” Riggleman said. “For Ahmed to spin and throw and get the ball near the plate and Murphy the catcher picks it on his backside, flips over to make the tag. That was just a great baseball play.”
Owings had four hits in his previous 50 at-bats when he went deep off reliever Jackson Stephens in the fifth to boost the lead to 9-5.
“He (Owings) has been hitting the ball extremely well and just hasn’t had much to show for it,” Lovullo said. “But today was a special swing that broken open a game. It was a huge part of the ball game because they closed the gap on us really quick.”
TRAINER’S ROOM
Reds: Riggleman said LHP Raisel Iglesias (biceps) and RHP Austin Brice (mid-back) may come off the 10-day disabled list Wednesday.
Diamondbacks: RHP Shelby Miller (Tommy John surgery) is to make his first rehab start Tuesday night for Class A Visalia. He will pitch four or five innings and throw 7075 pitches.
UP NEXT
The Reds send RH Luis Castillo (4-4, 5.34 ERA) to the mound and the Diamondbacks counter with RH Zack Godley (4-4, 4.53) in the second game of the series Tuesday night.