KU earns No. 2 seed in NCAA baseball regionals. Here's Jayhawks' game site & foe
The Kansas Jayhawks baseball team is headed to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2014.
Third-year coach Dan Fitzgerald's KU team finished as runner-up to West Virginia during the Big 12 regular season and lost in the semifinals of the conference's postseason tournament. On Monday the Jayhawks were assigned to a four-team regional in Arkansas as a No. 2 seed among the national field of 64.
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KU will meet No. 3 seed Creighton (41-14) in a first-round regional contest at 7 p.m. Friday at Baum-Walker Field in Fayetteville, Ark.
The other two teams in the double-elimination regional event are No. 1 seed Arkansas and North Dakota State. The Bison went 20-32 this season, winning the Summit League title.
The Razorbacks (43-13) finished second in the SEC behind Texas. They're rated fifth in the latest Division I baseball rankings and hold the same spot in RPI. Creighton's Bluejays (41-14) are coming off a Big East tournament championship and have won seven games in a row.
KU is ranked No. 25 nationally and No. 24 in the RPI.
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Each regional will include four teams playing in a double-elimination format. The regionals will start Friday and Saturday and run through Monday, June 2, with the winners meeting in best-of-three NCAA Super Regionals the following week.
Selection of the eight super regional hosts will be announced June 3.
'This is really special,' Fitzgerald said. 'To see the joy they (players) are having and for it to mean so much ... To be a 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament in year three and lead the Big 12 in wins, if someone told me that I would have taken it all day long and more.
'We have an awesome group of human beings in this program that care so much. We'll have a good practice today. They're ready.'
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The coach had no complaints about where KU was sent and the opposition in the Fayetteville regional.
'You look through this tournament,' Fitzgerald said, 'and this is true of the NCAA tournament: There's never a regional where you're like, 'Oh, man, that's an easy one for so-and-so.' They're all tough.'
Of KU's first-round foe, he said: 'Creighton has a really good team and is playing really good baseball.'
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