Alex Swenson, a former D1 coach and scout, breaks down all 64 teams in the 2024 NCAA baseball tournament, explains how regionals feed into super regionals and the College World Series in Omaha, and highlights the toughest regional matchups and mid-major contenders.
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The top 64 Division 1 baseball programs were just selected to play in the NCAA tournament. You guys can think of this as the March Madness, but for baseball, it's going to be June Madness because we're going to be going all the way through June until ultimately the winner of the College World Series. We'll start at the regionals, then we're going to the super regionals and then we're going to go to Omaha, the College World Series, and we're going to take a look at all of these teams here. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to zoom in so you can see this. And if you're on the podcast, I'll be talking about this so you can listen here. And if you're new to my chann, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout and recruiter that had played and coached in this tournament, which is this is the pinnacle for college baseball players and college coaches. This is what you want to get to because this gives you the path to the College World Series to ultimately win it. And there's where a lot of teams left out. There's about 300, 302 college baseball programs as far as Division 1, and only 64 made it. If you won your conference, you get an automatic bid. And and then if you don't win it, you go on and you have to basically earn it based off of your conference and based off your regular season, what you did, strength of schedule, rpi, all of those things. And there's some controversy here as far as teams that they feel like should have been in. There's TCU that has a really strong case of they should have been in Lamar as well. They had the second most wins at 45 at the Division 1 level in and would love to hear some feedback from you of which teams you think are going to be at the College World Series, who's going to win it and who do you think should have been in? Go on and comment down below. But let's go on and dive in and take a look at the top 16 teams. So the top 16 seeds, if you will, will be hosting regionals. That means it is at their place. And four teams are in each regional. So number one is the number one ranked team in the country is Tennessee. They were 50 and 11. Number two is Kentucky. Number three is Texas A&M. Number four is North Carolina. Number five is Arkansas. Number six is Clemson. Number seven is Georgia. Number eight is Florida State. Number nine is Oklahoma. Number 10 is NC State. Number 11 is Oklahoma State. Number 12 is UVA. Virginia there. And number 13 is Arizona. Number 14, UC Santa Barbara. Shout out to them mid major. And number 15 is Oregon State. And number 16 is East Carolina. So they will all be hosting and let's dive in to where these and who these programs are competing against. So there's four seeds in each regional. We'll start with Tennessee, the number one ranked team. They're going to have Southern Miss in there and they're going to compete against Southern Miss. There'll also be Indiana and Northern Kentucky. So Northern Kentucky is the 4 seed. So the first game on Friday, which of this week, and you might be watching this at a different time, but Tennessee will play the number four seed. The number two seed will play the number three seed and it's a double elimination at each regional. The next is Greenville. So whoever wins this regional will play the regional at Knoxville and that's the super regional. The best two out of three and then the winner of that will go to the College World Series. So Greenville Regional is East Carolina is the number one seed and number two seeds, Wake Forest, super competitive right here. Number three VCU and then number four Evansville there. All right, let's go on back over to Lexington. The number two seed in the country is Kentucky and they're going to in their regional and who they'll be playing first is Western Michigan and then they have Indiana State. They are a top mid major and man, watch out for them. They are a very good program. Number three Illinois and number four again, Western Michigan. They're going to be going and competing whoever the winner of Corvallis, which is Oregon State, uc, Irvine, Nicholas and Tulane. Tulane's going out to Oregon. They, they caught fire at the end and won their conference. Got that, that automatic bid. Then we have Norman, Oklahoma, it's going to be hosting there. Playing Duke, very competitive here. Yukon and then Oral Roberts. Oral Roberts went to the College World Series last year as a good mid major and surprised a lot of people there. Then we have Tallahassee, Florida State playing Alabama, UCF and Stetson. Very competitive. I don't. This is one of the top regionals as far as how competitive they are. So it's going to be very interesting to see who pans out there. And then we have over here, Raleigh, NC State's hosting. They have South Carolina, very good program, jmu and then Bryant as well. Okay. And then the winner of that is going to play the winner of the Athens regional at Georgia. Uncw, Georgia Tech in army there's those at least eight regionals there and then the next eight regionals. Which one of these regionals is I think the toughest? I want to hear your opinion. Which you think is the toughest regional and I'm going to tell you mine here. Fayetteville, Arkansas is the number one seed hosting. Number two is Louisiana Tech, number three is Kansas State and number four is Southeastern Missouri. Congratulations to them for making it the Charlottesville uva. I feel like they're in every single year. They're just so consistent. UVA is number one, Mississippi State, number two St. John's number three UPenn at number four. They've won the Ivy League back to back years. Coming up here on the top right we have Clemson as the number one seed hosting. They got Vanderbilt and then they have number three Coastal Carolina and number four High Point who's never made it. All right, never made it there which is congratulations to them. This is a very tough regional but I don't think the toughest. The next one, Stillwater I think is the toughest regional. Oklahoma State, very very good program they're hosting. Nebraska is really, really good this year. Florida they're they struggled this year but man they have so much talent And Niagara is a really good program. Had a lot of wins this year and it's also the first time making but I think that is one of the toughest regionals and a close second is the Clemson. And then we have Arizona, they'll be hosting Dallas Baptist, very good mid major there. West Virginia as the number three seed in that regional and then Grand Canyon and then we have also the the that will play. The winner of the Arizona regional is Chapel Hill. The UNC is hosting. They have lsu, Wofford and then they have LIU as far as they're rounding out their four seed there and then Santa Barbara, UC Santa Barbara will be hosting. They'll have San Diego as their number two seed, number three Oregon and number four Fresno State. And then lastly the last regional here, College Station. Texas A and M will be hosting and then they will be playing the Ragin Cajuns, Louisiana plus number three seed Texas and Grambling. Congratulations to them. So I want to hear from you guys, what do you think? Who's going to win the College World Series? Who's going to make it to the College World Series and who do you think shouldn't have been left out? I would love to hear from you. Comment down below and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.
