UCLA (51-6) earns top seed for NCAA baseball tournament - ESPN

OMAHA, Neb. — UCLA was rewarded Monday for its dominant, wire-to-wire run through the regular season with the No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament.

The tournament opens Friday with 16 double-elimination regionals. Winners will advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners will move on to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 12.

The Bruins (51-6), who swept the Big Ten Conference regular-season and tournament titles, were No. 1 in each of Baseball America's weekly rankings since the preseason and have the most wins entering regionals since Tennessee came in with 53 in 2022.

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UCLA's ace, Logan Reddemann, and its closer, Easton Hawk, are among the best in the nation and lead a staff that has a 3.31 ERA. Shortstop Roch Cholowsky is widely projected to be the No. 1 pick in the Major League Baseball amateur draft and he, Will Gasparino and Big Ten tournament MVP Mulivai Levu have combined for 57 homers.

Georgia Tech (48-9), which swept the Atlantic Coast Conference championships, features the nation's most prodigious offense. The Yellow Jackets lead Division I in scoring (10.8 runs per game), batting average (.358) and slugging (.636). Jarren Advincula is batting .431 to rank second nationally, and Vahn Lackey is sixth at .410.

The national seeds following UCLA and Georgia Tech are Georgia (46-12), Auburn (38-19), North Carolina (45-11-1), Texas (40-13), Alabama (37-19) and Florida (39-19). Top-eight national seeds, if they win their regional, are assured of hosting a super regional.

Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Southern Mississippi (44-15), Florida State (38-17), Oregon (40-16), Texas A&M (39-14), Nebraska (42-15), Mississippi State (40-17), Kansas (42-16)