UCLA awarded No. 1 seed for NCAA baseball tournament

UCLA has been awarded the No. 1 seed for the NCAA baseball tournament, recognising its dominant regular season and Big Ten Conference titles. The Bruins (51-6) enter the competition with the most wins in the nation since Tennessee in 2022. Georgia Tech (48-9) received the No. 2 seed, leading Division I in scoring and batting average.

The tournament begins with 16 double-elimination regionals on Friday, with winners advancing to super regionals and eventually the College World Series in Omaha starting 12 June. Winners of the regionals advance to eight best-of-three super regionals.

UCLA’s selection follows a wire-to-wire run through the regular season, where the team swept both the Big Ten Conference regular-season and tournament titles. The Bruins have held the No. 1 ranking in Baseball America’s weekly polls since the preseason. Their pitching staff, led by ace Logan Reddeman and closer Ethan Hawk, has maintained a 3.31 earned run average.

Georgia Tech enters as the primary challenger, having swept the Atlantic Coast Conference championships. The Yellow Jackets lead Division I in scoring with 10.8 runs per game, batting average at .358, and slugging percentage at .636. Jarren Advincula ranks second nationally in batting average at .431, while Vahn Lackey is sixth at .410.

Other top-eight national seeds include Georgia (46-12), Auburn (38-19), North Carolina (45-11-1), Texas (40-13), Alabama (37-19) and Florida (39-19). Seeds Nos. 9 through 16 are 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) and West Virginia (39-14).

LSU, the 2025 national champion, became the seventh program to win the title and not make a regional the following year since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999. Other programmes to achieve this are Mississippi (2022 title), Mississippi State (2021), Coastal Carolina (2016), UCLA (2013), Arizona (2012) and Oregon State (2007).