2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket: Projected Field Of 64 (April 10)
As the college baseball season passes the halfway point, the Road to Omaha is taking shape. While there’s still a lot of baseball to be played, it’s not too early to break down the postseason picture.
At this time of year, the emphasis is very much still on “projected.” This is not meant to be how the tournament would be seeded if it started tomorrow. Instead, it is meant to illustrate what it might be expected to look like on Selection Monday.
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RPI, the primary metric the selection committee uses to build the field, is starting to be instructive. Teams are still capable of making big gains (or losses) but that largely now is down to extended performance trends and not one weekend series.
You can find last week’s projection here.
NCAA Baseball Bracket
| PROJECTED FIELD OF 64 | ||||
| Fayetteville, Ark. | Conway, S.C. | |||
| 1. (1) Arkansas^* | 1. (16) Coastal Carolina^* | |||
| 2. Kansas State | 2. Georgia | |||
| 3. Northeastern* | 3. NC State | |||
| 4. Arkansas-Little Rock* | 4. Kennesaw State* | |||
| Clemson, S.C. | Terre Haute, Ind. | |||
| 1. (2) Clemson^* | 1. (15) Indiana State^* | |||
| 2. Louisiana* | 2. Nebraska* | |||
| 3. San Diego | 3. UC Santa Barbara | |||
| 4. Niagara* | 4. Northern Kentucky* | |||
| Tallahassee, Fla. | Stillwater, Okla. | |||
| 1. (3) Florida State^ | 1. (14) Oklahoma State^ | |||
| 2. Alabama | 2. Dallas Baptist* | |||
| 3. TCU | 3. LSU | |||
| 4. Bethune-Cookman* | 4. Grand Canyon* | |||
| College Station, Texas | Durham, N.C. | |||
| 1. (4) Texas A&M^ | 1. (13) Duke^ | |||
| 2. Oklahoma | 2. South Carolina | |||
| 3. Lamar* | 3. Texas Tech | |||
| 4. Army* | 4. S.C.-Upstate* | |||
| Knoxville, Tenn. | Greenville, N.C. | |||
| 1. (5) Tennessee^ | 1. (12) East Carolina^* | |||
| 2. Virginia Tech | 2. Wake Forest | |||
| 3. Utah | 3. Texas | |||
| 4. Sacred Heart* | 4. VCU* | |||
| Corvallis, Ore. | Orlando | |||
| 1. (6) Oregon State^* | 1. (11) UCF^* | |||
| 2. UC Irvine* | 2. Florida | |||
| 3. Portland* | 3. Arizona | |||
| 4. North Dakota State* | 4. Fresno State* | |||
| Chapel Hill, N.C. | Nashville | |||
| 1. (7) North Carolina^ | 1. (10) Vanderbilt^ | |||
| 2. Mississippi State | 2. Oregon | |||
| 3. St. John’s | 3. Southern Miss | |||
| 4. Bryant* | 4. Samford* | |||
| Lexington, Ky. | Charlottesville, Va. | |||
| 1. (8) Kentucky^ | 1. (9) Virginia^ | |||
| 2. Creighton* | 2. West Virginia | |||
| 3. Indiana | 3. Maryland | |||
| 4. Bowling Green State* | 4. Columbia* | |||
* denotes automatic bid
^ denotes regional host
Last Four In
Indiana
TCU
San Diego
St. John’s
First Four Out
Cincinnati
James Madison
Boston College
Georgetown
Next Four Out
Georgia Southern
Ole Miss
Campbell
Ohio State
When does the NCAA baseball bracket come out?
The full field of 64 is released on Monday, May 27 at 12 p.m. ET, an event commonly referred to as “Selection Monday.” The 2024 NCAA Tournament is set to begin later that week with regionals on Friday, May 31. That sets the path to the 2024 NCAA College World Series, which begins Friday, June 14.
Some notes about the field
If you look at this week’s Top 25 and this projection, you will notice they do not align.
Most notably, Indiana State is not ranked in the Top 25 but is listed here as the No. 15 overall seed.
The Top 25 and Projected Field of 64 have different purposes. The Top 25 is meant to rank how we view the 25 best teams in the country in the moment. The Projected Field of 64 is meant to be a projection of how the selection committee will build the NCAA Tournament two months from now. We also use different inputs. For example, the committee cares much more about RPI than we do. So, when I project Indiana State to host but we don’t rank it in the Top 25, the rationale is that we don’t think the Sycamores have produced one of the 25 best bodies of work right now but in two months time, when the selection committee evaluates their resume (which I project to include the Missouri Valley title and a top-16 RPI), the committee will award them a hosting spot. Remember, the emphasis is on projected.
There are three new hosts in this week’s projection. UCF, Indiana State and Duke all move up to the host line this week. Despite Duke being in the top 10 pretty much all season, I remain uncertain about the Blue Devils’ hosting chances. Some of that is their recent history, I’ll admit. They’ve been in the mix only to fade a couple times in the last few years. But it also has a lot to do with the metrics. Duke took a couple bad losses early that continue to haunt its RPI and its non-conference strength of schedule (232) is in a range where it might be held against Duke if it’s on the bubble. The bottom line for Duke is to keep winning ACC games. Do that and it’ll be fine.
UCF and Indiana State, meanwhile, are riding strong metrics. Neither has a ton of high-end wins but they’ve avoided bad losses and are in the mix at the top of their leagues. This is basically the same formula that the Sycamores used to host last year. Playing in the Missouri Valley, Indiana State has much less margin for error than UCF does in the Big 12 but both are in a solid spot today.
Just off the host line is Nebraska, which is 0-3 in quadrant 1 and needs to get some marquee wins somewhere in the second half of the season. Dallas Baptist, which fell off the host line, and UC Irvine are in pretty much the same spot as each other. I’d probably project all three as hosts if the tournament began tomorrow but it doesn’t and UCI and DBU have hardly any margin for error due to their poor schedule strength the rest of the season. If they hold serve throughout the second half, they might still host. But that’s too much for me to project in early April.
The Big 12 and Sun Belt merit close watching in the second half. They rank third and fourth in conference RPI and in both cases nearly the entire conference is still in the tournament picture. Both leagues will get at least a few bids and I’d expect both to produce at least one host. Only one team from either conference has a top-20 RPI today (UCF), but there’s still time for teams to push into that range and with so many strong teams in both conferences, any host contender will have plenty of opportunities to pick up impressive wins over the next couple months. I’m bullish on both leagues getting at least one host.
