Vanderbilt Selected As No. 1 Seed For NCAA Tournament

Vanderbilt was selected as the top seed for the 64-team Division I college baseball tournament Monday. <br/><br/>The Commodores (51-11), the Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament champions,

Monday, May 28th 2007, 3:21 pm

By: News On 6

Vanderbilt was selected as the top seed for the 64-team Division I college baseball tournament Monday.

The Commodores (51-11), the Southeastern Conference regular-season and tournament champions, will host one of 16 four-team, double-elimination regionals that begin Friday.

Also selected from Tennessee were Memphis (36-25) and Austin Peay (39-20). Both teams will play in Vanderbilt's bracket at Hawkins Field in Nashville.

Vanderbilt, led by star left-hander David Price and slugging third baseman Pedro Alvarez, was ranked No. 1 in various polls for the majority of the season and opens up against Austin Peay. Memphis will play Michigan (39-16).

The other national seeds, in order, are: Rice (49-12), North Carolina (48-12), Texas (44-15), Arizona State (43-13), Florida State (47-11), Arkansas (41-19) and San Diego (43-16). As national seeds, those teams won't have to face each other unless they make it to the College World Series.

All 16 of the host schools selected Sunday are No. 1 seeds in their regionals. The other top seeds are: Coastal Carolina (48-11), Long Beach State (37-18), Mississippi (37-23), Missouri (40-16), South Carolina (42-18), Texas A&M (44-16), Virginia (43-14) and Wichita State (49-19).

``The committee spent a great deal of time on the seeding process, more so than I've ever been involved in from Nos. 9 to 16,'' committee chairman Larry Templeton said. ``It seemed that 1 through 8 came together fairly easy, but who the other eight seeds were, we spent a great deal of time on.''

The winners of each regional will advance to the super regionals, played June 8-11. The eight winners of the super regionals will play in the College World Series, which starts June 15 in Omaha, Neb.

The Atlantic Coast Conference led the tournament field with seven berths. Joining North Carolina and Florida State are Clemson, Miami, North Carolina State, Virginia and Wake Forest.

The Big 12 had six teams, with Baylor, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M joining Texas.

After getting eight berths last season and nine in 2005 and 2004, the SEC got just five teams. It's the fewest for the conference since getting four berths in 1994 _ five years before the NCAA expanded the tournament from 48 to 64 teams.

``I'm not happy the Southeastern Conference only got five, but I respect the other nine people on our committee that made that decision,'' said Templeton, also the athletic director at Mississippi State. ``The majority of the committee felt that we should go a different direction, and I support that move.''

Miami (36-22) is making its 35th straight tournament appearance to extend its NCAA record. Meanwhile, Brown (27-19) is making its first appearance after winning the Ivy League title.

Defending national champion Oregon State (38-17) received an at-large bid, and looks to join Texas (1949-50), Southern California (1970-74), Stanford (1987-88) and Louisiana State (1996-97) as repeat winners. The Beavers are the No. 3 seed in the Charlottesville, Va., regional, and will open against Big East tournament champion Rutgers (41-19).

Georgia Tech, whose RPI was 29th in the country, joined Georgia as the only schools who played in last year's College World Series that failed to make the field of 64. The Yellow Jackets (32-25) were one of 10 teams the committee considered for the last three or four spots, but were hurt by losing eight of their last 10 and finishing seventh in the ACC.

``They were there at the end, and it was just a tough decision,'' Templeton said. ``I don't think we ever said just because you're the No. 1 RPI conference in the country, we're going to give you a certain number of spots. That's the way it shook out.''

Tennessee, Oklahoma, the College of Charleston and Gonzaga were also among the final teams considered.

Wofford (30-31) is the only team in the field with a losing record after winning the Southern Conference championship for the first time in school history. The Terriers open against South Carolina in the Columbia, S.C., regional.