The NCAA awarded Texas Tech baseball a top-eight national seed in its NCAA tournament selection show Monday morning, much to the surprise of most Red Raider fans after Texas Tech’s 1-2 performance at the Big 12 tournament.
In the end, the committee looked more to the season RPI and the strength of schedule to award the 8th seed to Texas Tech over schools like Stanford and Notre Dame. It also helps that Texas Tech has worked itself into being a national baseball brand in the last decade in ways that Notre Dame and even Stanford can’t compete with. More on that later though.
The Red Raiders will host an NCAA regional this weekend starting on Friday, June 4th, with the opportunity to host an NCAA Super Regional if the Red Raiders win this weekend.
That won’t be easy with North Carolina, UCLA, and Army coming into Lubbock, but there is definitely precedent for Texas Tech to have success at the Lubbock Regional.
From 2016-2021 Texas Tech is the only school in the country that has hosted every single season. With the 2020 tournament being canceled that is five straight NCAA Regionals that Texas Tech has hosted.
Not Arkansas or Texas or TCU or Mississippi State or Florida or any other College baseball royalty. Now, has Texas Tech won a national championship? Not yet, but they are hosting regionals at a better clip than anyone else over the last half-decade.
Not only that, as the 8th seed, that makes Texas Tech a lock for a Super Regional in Lubbock if they win this weekend. Texas Tech is undefeated in Super Regionals played in Lubbock. They have a single blemish on their regional record though losing the 2017 Lubbock Regional and failing to advance.
Texas Tech baseball is hunting its third straight trip to Omaha and the 5th in the last seven College World Series tournaments.
That all makes Texas Tech baseball a name brand in College Baseball which in turn gives them a decided advantage when it comes to seeding and rankings. That’s just a plain fact. There are programs in every college sport that get the benefit of the logo on the front of their uniform and in the college baseball world that Double T is more powerful than that little Fighting Irishman. Get used to it.
Texas Tech is the No. 1 seed in the Lubbock Regional and will play its first game against No. 4 Army at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, June 4th. Later that day No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 UNC will play with first pitch scheduled for 6:00 p.m.
If Texas Tech does win its Regional, it will host its Super Regional series against whoever comes out of the Stanford Regional. The teams in that bracket are Stanford, UC-Irvine, Nevada and North Dakota State.
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