NCAA Division I baseball tournament

NCAA Division I
Baseball Championship

Current season, competition or edition: 2024 NCAA Division I baseball tournament
Sport	Baseball
Founded	1947; 77 years ago (1947)
First season	1947
Organising body	NCAA
No. of teams	64
Country	United States
Most recent champion(s)	LSU
Most titles	Southern California (12)
TV partner(s)	ESPN ESPN2
Level on pyramid	1
Official website	ncaa.com/baseball

The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is held each year from May through June and features 64 college baseball teams in the United States, culminating in the eight-team Men's College World Series (MCWS) at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska.

The tournament is unique in that it features four tiers of competition, alternating between double-elimination brackets and best-of-three series. In fact, throughout the entire 64-team tournament, a team can lose a total of four games and still be crowned champions.

Format[edit]

During team selection, the top 16 of the 64-team field are given "national seeds". As in other NCAA tournaments, conference champions (usually determined by a tournament) receive automatic bids, and the selection committee fills the remaining spots.

The first round of the tournament, called Regionals, consists of 16 locations that include four teams, seeded 1 through 4, competing in a double-elimination bracket. The 16 national seeds are given the No. 1 seed in their assigned regional. The host sites are determined largely by merit – most national seeds host – but are also contested by bids from schools guaranteeing the NCAA a certain amount of revenue from that regional. Host teams traditionally have a large advantage, although the home team for each game is determined by rule, so the host school sometimes plays as the visiting team.

The regionals are paired together as in a typical 16-team bracket tournament; the regional containing the No. 1 national seed is paired with the regional containing the No. 16 national seed, that containing the No. 2 national seed with that containing the No. 15 national seed, and so forth. This creates the matchups for the second round of competition, the Super Regionals, which are a best-of-three series between the winners of each paired regional.

The Super Regionals are typically hosted by the higher national seed in the regional pairing. If that team does not advance, but the lower national seed advances, the Super Regional will be played at that team's field. If neither of the two advancing teams are national seeds, they will bid for hosting rights. Although one school hosts all three games, the teams split home-team status in the first two games, with the host school batting last in the opening game and first in game 2. If a third game is needed, a coin toss determines home-team status.

The eight Super Regional winners meet in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Men's College World Series. The MCWS mimics the earlier rounds, consisting of two double-elimination brackets of four teams each. Thereafter, the winners of each bracket meet in a best-of-three final. The winner of this final series wins the MCWS and is crowned the national champion. The school with the most national champions is USC with 12, though the Trojans have not won one since 1998, and have not appeared in the World Series at all since 2002. They are followed by LSU, with 7 national champions between 1991 and 2023.

Team titles[edit]

The following table shows the total national championships won by school, as well a map of all champions.

Team # Years won USC 12 1948 1958 1961 1963 1968 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1978 1998 LSU 7 1991 1993 1996 1997 2000 2009 2023 Texas 6 1949 1950 1975 1983 2002 2005 Arizona State 5 1965 1967 1969 1977 1981 Arizona 4 1976 1980 1986 2012 Cal State Fullerton 1979 1984 1995 2004 Miami (FL) 1982 1985 1999 2001 Minnesota 3 1956 1960 1964 Oregon State 2006 2007 2018 California 2 1947 1957 Michigan 1953 1962 Oklahoma 1951 1994 South Carolina 2010 2011 Stanford 1987 1988 Vanderbilt 2014 2019

Team # Years Coastal Carolina 1 2016 Florida 2017 Fresno State 2008 Georgia 1990 Holy Cross 1952 Mississippi State 2021 Missouri 1954 Ohio State 1966 Oklahoma State 1959 Ole Miss 2022 Pepperdine 1992 Rice 2003 UCLA 2013 Virginia 2015 Wake Forest 1955 Wichita State 1989

LSU Texas Arizona State Arizona Cal State Fullerton Miami Minnesota Oregon State California Michigan Oklahoma South Carolina Stanford Vanderbilt Coastal Carolina Florida Fresno State Georgia Holy Cross Mississippi State Missouri Ohio State Oklahoma State Ole Miss Pepperdine Rice UCLA Virginia Wake Forest Wichita State USC class=notpageimage| Schools that have won the NCAA Championship 12 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Appearances[edit]

The following tables show the total appearances in the NCAA Tournament by school. The official NCAA record only includes the District playoff games starting in 1954, so only the top 8 teams from earlier years appear on this table. This may not align with every individual school's media guide.

Appearances by team[edit]

Total Columns

• School refers to the current name and branding of the baseball team.
• Conference shows where the school as of the 2024 season.
•  #  Total appearances in the NCAA Tournament, not counting vacated appearances.
•  16  Finished in the top 16 of the tournament: top 2 in a District or Regional (1950 through 1998) or won a Regional (1999 to present). Prior to 1966, some Districts would just select a representative straight into the College World Series, so some years may not have 16 teams with this designation.
•  WS  Total appearances in the College World Series
•  CH  National Championships

Table Entries

•  CH  National Champion
•  RU  National Runner-up
•  W³   W⁴   W⁵   W⁷  Played in the College World Series with the given placement. All World Series since 1950 have had 2 teams finish in 5th and two teams finish in 7th. Since 1988, all have had 2 teams finish in 3rd, but before then, some years would have separate 3rd and 4th place teams, depending on how the bracket played out.

From 1982 through 1986, the NCAA identified the top 5 teams and slotted them into separate Regionals. Those teams are shown in with double underline. From 1987 through 1998, all eight Regionals included a top seed, which are also shown with double underline. Starting in 1999, there were 16 Regionals, and the top 8 national seeds are shown with double underline, while the next 8 seeds are shown with single underline. These seeded teams are not always the host of the Regional, but in recent years, the list of hosts aligns very closely to the list of top seeds.