Play ball! Things to know entering the NCAA baseball regionals
Regional winners advance to best-of-three super regionals next week, and the final eight go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, beginning June 13.
Who's hot
Northeastern's 27-game win streak is the longest in Division I since Fairfield rolled off 28 straight in 2021. The Huskies (48-9) are making their fourth NCAA appearance since 2018 under Mike Glavine, younger brother of Baseball Hall of Fame member Tom Glavine. The Huskies are the No. 2 regional seed in Tallahassee, Florida, and open against Mississippi State.
No. 13 national seed Coastal Carolina (48-11) brings an 18-game streak into its home regional. The Chanticleers swept the Sun Belt regular-season and tournament titles under Kevin Schnall, who took over for longtime coach Gary Gilmore this year. They open against Fairfield.
Columbia (29-17) has won nine in a row and 16 of 17. The Ivy League champions are a No. 4 regional seed and meet No. 16 national seed Southern Mississippi.
Arizona State (35-22) and Kentucky (29-24) each have lost four straight.
The Sun Devils are batting .266 with a total of 12 runs and two homers over their past four and are coming off a 2-0 loss to BYU in the Big 12 Tournament.
The Wildcats lost their final regular-season series against No. 1 national seed Vanderbilt by a total of four runs and then lost 5-1 to Oklahoma in the SEC Tournament.
Still waiting
East Carolina (33-25), which received the American Athletic's automatic bid by winning the conference tournament as a No. 6 seed, has never reached the College World Series in 34 previous NCAA Tournament appearances, the longest streak of its kind. The Pirates are in the field for the ninth time in 10 years.
Clemson (44-16) has never won a national championship, or finished as runner-up, in 46 previous appearances.
The curse of the No. 1 national seed was finally broken last year when Tennessee won the national championship. Before that, the only No. 1 to win it all was Miami in 1999.
Welcome to the party
Big South Tournament champion USC Upstate, a full Division I member since 2011, is making its tournament debut. The Spartans are second in the nation in scoring at 9.7 runs per game, and Johnny Sweeney is third in RBIs (81) and Scott Campbell is 17th in batting average (.400). They open at No. 11 national seed Clemson, just over an hour southwest of their Spartanburg, South Carolina, campus.
Toughest regional
The Oxford Regional, hosted by Mississippi, gets the nod.
The Rebels earned the No. 10 national seed after winning three games in the SEC Tournament to reach the final, where it lost 3-2 to Vanderbilt. They expect to get back No. 3 starter Mason Nichols and right fielder Ryan Moerman from injury.
Their opponent, Murray State (39-13), is in the tournament for the first time since 2003 after winning the Missouri Valley Tournament. The Racers had a three-run lead against the Rebels in Oxford on March 5 before losing 8-7 in 10 innings.
Georgia Tech (40-17), the No. 2 regional seed, is the first ACC regular-season champion since 1999 to not host. The Yellow Jackets are matched against Western Kentucky (46-12), which set a school record for wins and has the Conference USA player and newcomer of the year in Ryan Wideman and pitcher of the year in Drew Whalen.
No guarantees
Regional hosts have advanced to super regionals 66.8% of the time (267 of 400) since the tournament went to its current format in 1999. Last year, 10 hosts won regionals.
The fewest hosts to advance were seven in 2007 and 2014, eight in 2018 and nine in 2017 and 2023.
Feeling a draft
Eleven projected first-round picks in the Major League Baseball amateur draft are in the tournament, including four of the top six, according to MLB.com analyst Jim Callis.
Heading the group are three left-handed pitchers: Tennessee's Liam Doyle (2), LSU's Kade Anderson (3) and Florida State's Jamie Arnold (5).
Next are Oregon State SS Aiva Arquette (6), Oklahoma RHP Kyson Witherspoon (11), North Carolina C Luke Stevenson (16), Tennessee 2B Gavin Kilen (18), Wake Forest SS Marek Houston (19), Arizona OF Brendan Summerhill (20), Auburn OF-C Ike Irish (21) and Southern Mississippi RHP J.B. Middleton (22).
Duck's dingers
Oregon center fielder and leadoff man Mason Neville is first in the nation in homers with a school-record 26, and 42 of his 61 hits have gone for extra bases. But Neville enters regionals just 2 for his last 27, and he has gone a season-high five straight games without a homer.
Who is this guy?
The best player you've probably never heard of is Northeastern left-handed pitcher Will Jones. The 6-foot-5, 215-pound graduate student is second in the nation with a 1.82 ERA and third in wins with an 11-0 record. He has been part of five of the Huskies' nation-leading 17 shutouts.
Jones had Tommy John surgery when he was in high school in Southampton, Massachusetts, and didn't throw a pitch his first two seasons with the Huskies. He threw in 48 innings over 21 appearances, including two starts, in 2023 and '24. He has pitched 69 1/3 innings this season with 72 strikeouts, and his 11 wins are a school record.
Geography lesson
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
President Trump's executive order on college sports: Here's what it actually means
WASHINGTON — On Thursday morning in the nation's capital, NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke to a few dozen members and guests of the National Press Club — an operation located in Washington's downtown, just a short walk to the White House. Just hours later, the association's years-long fight for federal intervention in college sports received, perhaps, a boost from the man living just a few blocks away. President Donald Trump released his long-awaited executive order related to college athletics, announcing in a five-page order titled 'SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS' that he is directing members of his cabinet to create policy around several aspects of the industry that protect the NCAA and conferences from enforcing and creating rules to govern it. But what exactly does Trump's executive order mean? What will it change, if anything, about college sports' athlete compensation and transfer environment? The short answer, at least for now, is not very much. The longer answer is … well … there are still questions. What are the most important items in the order? Trump's executive order has been a long time coming. In fact, just last week Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of a draft of the order, which isn't wholly different to the one he signed and released on Thursday. Above anything else, the order's preamble describes the college athletics landscape as having been subject to unfair court rulings that 'created an out-of-control, rudderless system' which is 'under unprecedented threat.' 'Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,' Trump writes in the order. He goes on to write critically that some schools are paying their athletes as much as $50 million this year from a combination of House settlement-related revenue share and third-party NIL. 'A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women's sports,' he writes. How he plans to do this is to direct various members of his cabinet — the attorney general, secretary of labor, secretary of education, etc. — to create policy around several concepts that the NCAA and conferences have been requesting help on from Congress for years. Among those: Protecting scholarships for non-revenue sports: The executive order, most notably, requires schools to maintain or even increase the number of scholarships they provide to non-revenue sports. This is geared to protect Olympic and women's sports that are at risk of elimination as schools direct more funding away from those and to the sports that generate the revenue like football and men's basketball. Those with $125 million or budgets (most of the power league schools) must provide more scholarship opportunities than they did last year, for instance. Those with budgets of $50 million must provide at least the same. Prohibit third-party, 'pay-for-play': You might call this the prohibition of booster collective pay to athletes, which, in a way, codifies the House settlement terms that prohibit collective pay to athletes if they are not deemed to be for legitimate endorsement or commercial opportunities. This issue is at the heart of negotiations among attorneys that is expected to result in a resolution soon that permits collectives to operate in a more open capacity than first thought. The executive order reinforces that provision in the House settlement. How does Trump plan to enforce these parameters? Well, that remains a bit murky, but he suggests in the order that members of his cabinet, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have 30 days to create a plan on the enforcement of such, including potentially withholding federal funding for violators, opening up Title IX investigations, etc. Athlete employment: Trump directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to 'clarify the status of college athletes' — an obvious gesture toward the ongoing debate over courts potentially deeming college athletes as employees. As stated in the order preamble, Trump is against college athletes becoming employees and is clearly, with this directive, ordering cabinet members and the NLRB — he appoints the board — to rule that college athletes are students. Ironically enough, while many college leaders fight against employment, some of them believe collective bargaining is the only solution for the industry. Limited liability protection: This is another issue the NCAA and conferences have spent millions of dollars and six years lobbying for. They want to be protected from legal challenges so they can enforce their rules over things such as transfers, roster limits, booster pay — many of which have been deemed illegal by courts. Trump clearly disagrees with these court rulings, as he notes in the preamble. The order directs the attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to create policies to protect the 'long-term availability of college athletic scholarship and opportunities' when such is 'unreasonably challenged under antitrust' law. The attorney general and the FTC have 60 days to create such a plan, the order says. What are the immediate impacts of the executive order? The answer here is potentially … nothing. Trump's cabinet members — many of whom are quite busy with other more pressing matters — will need to make policy around these subjects. The specifics of that policy will dictate exactly how pivotal, if at all, this order is. What is a certainty is that whatever policies are created are not law and will likely be subject to legal scrutiny. Congressional action and court rulings are law in this country — not executive orders, legal experts tell Yahoo Sports. Baker even suggested this during his talk Thursday morning. 'You can't fix this stuff from executive order,' he said. 'Our focus for now really needs to be trying to get stuff dealt with through the legislative process.' As it turns out, Wednesday was a historic day for college sports with regard to congressional legislation. An all-encompassing federal college sports bill made its way out of committee for the first time since the NCAA's lobbying efforts began nearly six years ago. The SCORE Act, bipartisan but pro-Republican and NCAA-friendly legislation that many Democrats are against, received the necessary votes to advance out of committees and is eligible for debate on the House floor when members return in September from their traditional summer break. In many ways, the SCORE Act grants the NCAA and conferences similar protections as Trump's order. Above anything, Trump's executive order may get Congress to more urgently and swiftly push the bill across the goal line. However, if it does advance out of the House, the SCORE Act faces stiff pushback in a divided U.S. Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to overcome the filibuster and reach the 60-vote margin for any bill passage. The Senate, though, has been working toward the introduction of its own legislation, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, who, much like Trump, has made college sports regulation a priority. He's been in negotiations now for months with several Democrats, most notably Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Cory Booker. No agreement has been reached despite more than a year of intense talks. Will Trump's executive order change that? It's one of many questions on the topic that remains a mystery.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
What does Trump's college sports executive order mean? Breaking down the impact
'President Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports.' If only it was that simple. The 176th executive order President Trump signed in the past seven months was announced Thursday with an audaciously headlined statement from the White House. We don't know how this will play out long term. But these are the key facts surrounding the executive order and the questions that need to be answered. What's happened in college sports that brought it to the federal government? The NCAA has been under attack on numerous legal fronts for more than a decade, particularly when it comes to paying athletes. Its policy for decades was strict amateurism — any compensation athletes received beyond their scholarships would render them ineligible. The model began cracking through a series of antitrust cases brought by former athletes, most notably Alston vs. NCAA in 2021. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that schools must be allowed to provide additional academic awards. By then, states began passing legislation allowing athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness — i.e. endorsement deals — in direct opposition to the NCAA's longstanding ban. On July 1, 2021, the NCAA relented and began allowing NIL payments, which touched off another antitrust case, House v. NCAA. A class of former athletes sued for back pay for missing out on NIL opportunities. The defendants agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement, part of which allows schools to pay athletes directly for the first time, up to $20.5 million. A judge approved the settlement on June 6, 2025. But the lack of an organized NIL system has led to chaos, with boosters exploiting the lack of enforcement. And with other legal challenges forcing the NCAA to eliminate its longstanding rules about transfers, athletes now routinely hop from one school to another in search of their next payday. Desperate for regulation, college sports leaders have been lobbying Congress for help in the form of a federal law for years, but not until recently has there been any significant movement on a bill. What are the key takeaways of the executive order? The order essentially makes recommendations for how college athletic departments should operate and directs several government agencies to weigh in on issues that will shape the future of college sports. It also delivers the NCAA and conferences much of what it has been lobbying for on Capitol Hill. However, the order's ability to turn ideas into action is questionable. The order: Gives a nod to protecting women's and Olympic sports by setting benchmarks for scholarships and opportunities based on the amount of money an athletic department makes. Bans 'pay-for-play' to athletes by schools, a bedrock principle of the NCAA and college sports that leaders are still clinging to. The order does try to carve out exceptions for endorsement and sponsorship deals with third-party businesses. Calls on the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the employment status of student-athletes. Under a Republican administration, that likely decreases the chances athletes would have the right to organize. Directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to find ways to hand rule-making power back to the NCAA, conferences and other college sports governing bodies and away from courts and state legislatures. Who benefits from this? Considering how much it falls in line with what college sports leaders have been asking for, it would be difficult to call it athlete-friendly. Yes, it tries to protect non-revenue programs and force schools to fund a wide-range of teams for athletes to participate in college sports, but limiting compensation by regulating NIL compensation and banning pay-for-play has been at the root of problems for decades. 'Looks like an NCAA press release,' said Marc Edelman, professor of sports law at Baruch College and antitrust expert who has been a critic of NCAA policies. Several ideas for student-athlete compensation have emerged over the years to help relegate the market, from collective bargaining agreements to defining student-athletes as university employees. Though how much athletes actually want those things is hard to say; with more than 190,000 athletes competing in Division I sports, gauging consensus is tricky. Will this actually change anything? In the short term: no. In the long term: maybe. The biggest possible downside of the executive order is it could create more uncertainty for college sports, creating policies that may or may not hold. 'It very much depends on how this gets enforced moving forward, and whether it gets enforced moving forward,' said Sam Ehrlich, assistant professor at Boise State's college of business and economics. 'Maybe this could just end up being just a statement that goes absolutely nowhere.' What can the executive order do? It's not so much what an executive order can do as what it can't. It can't make a law, it can't provide an antitrust exemption and it can't override state laws. Congress can do that. And that's what college sports needs. Any policies that come from an executive order can either be challenged in court and reversed by the next administration, which means college sports continues to operate under a blanket of uncertainty when it comes to defining the relationship between schools and athletes. That's exactly what college sports leaders are trying to stop. What power does the government have in these situations? The executive branch does not have the authority to provide straightforward solutions to college sports' problems, most importantly some form of antitrust exemption. That has to come from Congress, and right now will require bipartisan support. The president's involvement could prioritize the issues in a way that motivates lawmakers to build on recent momentum in the Republican-controlled House, where a college sports bill made it out of committee for the first time earlier this week. Or maybe pervasive political divisiveness makes Democrats recoil from the idea of giving the president a symbolic victory. While the complicated problems facing college sports now are not quite a matter of life and death, it remains to be seen if presidential involvement makes finding solutions easier or harder. What is The SCORE Act? The SCORE Act is a House bill that would provide the NCAA and conferences some antitrust protection, pre-empt state laws related to NIL compensation and bolster the terms of the House settlement. The SCORE Act made it through two Republican-led House committees on partisan lines earlier this week. No college sports bill has ever gotten so far. When Congress returns for the fall session, the bill could go to the House floor for a vote and it will probably pass. That's meaningful and a positive sign for many in college sports after years of inaction by lawmakers. The bill also has little support from Democrats in the House and stands very little chance of making it through the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to vote with Republicans to get the 60 necessary to pass. What divides Republicans and Democrats? The debate over college sports legislation on Capitol Hill is akin to a labor dispute. Republicans, who currently control both chambers and the White House, are focused on ways to shield the NCAA and college sports conferences from litigation and state laws that make it impossible for them to effectively govern national competition. Democrats are demanding greater protections for the workers (the athletes) and are hesitant to provide the antitrust protections college sports leaders have been lobbying for. The NCAA and conferences want a law that would prevent college athletes from being deemed employees. Democrats want that option left open, along with athletes' rights to organize and maybe even join unions. What precedents are there involving federal legislation and higher education in sports? The president's EO is the most significant and direct entry by the executive branch into college athletics since Teddy Roosevelt's calls for safety reforms in football led to the creation of the NCAA in 1906. Lyndon Johnson's executive order signed in 1967, led to the passage of the federal Title IX gender discrimination law, which has been credited with paving the way for an explosion of opportunities for women in college sports. What does this mean for the NCAA? The NCAA as a governing body is ceding power to conferences and the newly formed College Sports Commission. However, it played a pivotal role in lobbying for federal legislation and has been much better received by lawmakers since former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker took over as NCAA president two years ago. The NCAA's future will ultimately be determined by college sports stakeholders, not politicians. Why is the president getting involved? The White House's announcement hailed Trump's long-held interest in college athletics, including preserving Olympic and women's sports amid the changing landscape. Until now, Trump's engagement with higher education has been adversarial, threatening federal funding and litigation against schools for Title IX violations or allegations of antisemitism and discrimination through the promotion of diversity at universities. Trump came away from a meeting with former Alabama football coach Nick Saban in May motivated to get involved. The formation of a presidential commission led by Saban and billionaire oil businessman Cody Campbell, a former Texas Tech football player and current board chair, was considered then put on hold as lawmakers worked on legislative solutions. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. College Football, Men's College Basketball, Women's College Basketball, College Sports 2025 The Athletic Media Company
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
JuJu Watkins, Azzi Fudd among 14 NCAA basketball stars to ink Unrivaled NIL deals
The post JuJu Watkins, Azzi Fudd among 14 NCAA basketball stars to ink Unrivaled NIL deals appeared first on ClutchPoints. Fourteen standout NCAA women's basketball players, including JuJu Watkins, Azzi Fudd and Flau'Jae Johnson, have signed NIL deals with Unrivaled, the women's 3-on-3 basketball league announced Saturday. Unrivaled, co-founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, is entering its second season and continuing its college outreach initiative after inking similar NIL deals last year with players like Paige Bueckers and Johnson. The latest class features athletes ranging from sophomores to seniors and includes top talent from across the country. 'Just seeing from the first year what (the league) was able to build, you know it's only going to get better,' said UConn guard Fudd, as reported by Alyce Brown of the Associated Press. 'I'm super excited.' Watkins, the USC sophomore who is currently recovering from an ACL injury, previously invested in Unrivaled during its Series A funding round. Johnson, a junior at LSU, praised the league's role in elevating women's sports. 'They're doing it in the W and really giving us a chance in college to really go at it,' she said during Saturday's announcement at a pop-up event in Indianapolis. Unrivaled's NIL class to attend event in Miami ahead January season start Other signees include Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo, UConn's Sarah Strong, TCU's Olivia Miles, UCLA's Kiki Rice and sisters Lauren and Sienna Betts. Texas' Madison Booker, Iowa State's Audi Crooks, LSU's MiLaysia Fulwiley, South Carolina's Ta'Niya Latson and Michigan's Syla Swords round out the group. The NIL class will attend a multi-day event at Unrivaled's headquarters in Miami that includes skill development and content creation. The league's second season is set to begin in January. 'Our job is to try to bridge the gap between the current stars that are in Unrivaled and the future stars sitting on the stage right now,' said Luke Cooper, president of basketball operations. Unrivaled completed its inaugural season in March and aims to further grow its platform in year two. Related: Michigan State basketball's Tom Izzo calls for 'guardrails' in transfer portal Related: Louisville basketball's Pat Kelsey gives 'great' Kasean Pryor injury update
