Monday at noon the national seeds and full bracket for the 2018 NCAA Baseball Tournament will be announced. Will Clemson be a national seed? Which regional winner will the winner of the Clemson regional play? Who are the most likely No. 2 seeds for the Clemson regional? TCI brings you our latest projections.
We believe Clemson will be seeded somewhere between 7th and 10th seed. The other teams that will likely fall in that range are Stetson, North Carolina and Georgia.
The big question is how the committee with handle Stetson. The winner of the Atlantic Sun conference finished 45-11 and the nation’s 4th best RPI. In previous years the committee has placed an emphasis on teams from the power-conferences that played a more difficult schedule week by week. As we have pointed out in previous years some have put too much stock into the RPI.
Another question is will the committee put North Carolina (38-18) ahead of the Tigers (45-14). Both teams finished tied for the ACC regular season championship. Clemson made it to Saturday in the ACC Tournament while Pittsburgh knocked out the Heels. The two teams did not play this season.
All 16 regional host teams will be seeded. That will determine the Super Regional matchups. This is a change from how things have been done in the past.
So the 7th seed regional will be in the bracket with the 10th seed regional and the 8th seed regional will be in the bracket with the 9th seed regional. So Clemson’s regional winner will play the winner of the Stetson regional, the Georgia regional or the North Carolina regional.
We believe it is likely that an SEC team will be the No. 2 seed in Clemson’s regional. We do not expect South Carolina to be in the regional with the Tigers. The likely No. 2 seeds for the Clemson regional are Auburn, LSU or Mississippi State.
It’s time to give our annual predictions the night before the announcement.
TCI Projections:
No. 7 Seed – Georgia
No. 8 Seed – Clemson
No. 9 Seed – Stetson
No. 10 Seed – North Carolina
No. 2 Seed in Clemson Regional – Auburn
We will continue to monitor this closely so stay tuned to TCI for the latest information. In some previous years we have been able to break the news about who is in Clemson’s regional before it was announced.
