NCAA Baseball Tournament bracket: Arizona Wildcats a 2-seed in Lubbock Regional with Texas Tech, Sam Houston State, and Delaware

And so it begins

After being left out of the Regional hosting picture, the Arizona Wildcats will hit the road to start the NCAA Tournament this weekend.

U of A will be forced to travel to Lubbock, Texas and face off against the Sam Houston State Bearkats on Friday at 4 PM PT on WatchESPN. Texas Tech and Delaware are the other two teams in Lubbock.

Arizona lost at Texas Tech earlier this year, and played Sam Houston State twice in last year’s Lafayette Regional.

The Lubbock Regional is paired with the Tallahassee Regional.

Arizona finished the 2017 regular season 16-14 in Pac-12 play, just like they did in 2016. That was good for fourth place in the conference behind Oregon State, Stanford, and UCLA. U of A fell from 15th to 23rd in the RPI after dropping two-of-three to Cal this past weekend.

OSU is the overall No. 1 seed, and the Corvallis Regional (Nebraska, Yale, Holy Cross) is paired with the Clemson Regional (Vanderbilt, St. John’s, UNC-Greensboro). Stanford is the overall No. 8 seed. The Cardinal will host Cal State Fullerton, BYU, and Sacramento State. Stanford is paired up with the Long Beach Regional.

UCLA is the 3-seed in the Long Beach Regional, getting matched up with Texas in the first game. The Bruins’ inclusion in the field kind of forced Arizona out of that Regional.

The Wildcats’ 37 wins overall were the third-most in the conference, and they finished the year ranked 3rd in non-conference RPI, posting a 21-5 record against those teams.

The NCAA Baseball Tournament will start on Friday for most teams. Stanford will start on Thursday because of BYU being included. All games will be found somewhere on the ESPN networks.

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