The UCLA baseball team (51-6) is hosting the Los Angeles Regional as the nation\u2019s No. 1 overall seed, and USC (43-15) is headed to the College Station Regional hosted by 12th-seeded Texas A&M, the NCAA announced Monday.<\/p>\n
After walking off Oregon 3-2 on Sunday in Omaha to claim their first Big Ten tournament title, the Bruins will defend Jackie Robinson Stadium and push to make their second consecutive College World Series run. UCLA faces Saint Mary\u2019s (seeded fourth in the L.A. regional) in the Westwood opener at noon Friday on ESPNU, while No. 2 Virginia Tech and No. 3 Cal Poly will face off at 5 p.m on ESPN+ to complete the Los Angeles Regional.<\/p>\n
If the Bruins advance, they will host a super regional against the winner of the Morgantown Regional hosted by West Virginia.<\/p>\n
USC is making its second consecutive NCAA tournament appearance for the first time since 2002. The Trojans are seeded second at College Station and will face 36-24 Texas State at 6 p.m. PDT on Friday at Texas A&M\u2019s Blue Bell Park on ESPN+. The Aggies will face Lamar at 1 p.m. PDT on the SEC Network to open the College Station Regional.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you start in August, the goal is to play in Omaha,\u201d USC coach Andy Stankiewicz said, alluding to the home of the College World Series. \u201cBut before you get in Omaha, you got to get to a regional. And so, here we are. [We\u2019d] certainly love to be hosting a regional, but it\u2019s OK. We\u2019re on our way to Texas to tee it up against some really good Texas teams. That\u2019s the goal, to be ready to play. Our boys are up here working right now, and they\u2019ll get ready for a great weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
If USC advances, the Trojans would play the winner of the Chapel Hill Regional hosted by North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Stankiewicz said that making back-to-back tournaments for the first time in 22 years is \u201ca good stat,\u201d but \u201cthis place has been built on national championships.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trojans posted a nearly perfect 32-1 record at Dedeaux Field in their first season back, after the venue underwent two years of renovations. But USC won just 10 of 23 road games.<\/p>\n
USC suffered a devastating 7-5 walk-off loss to UCLA on Saturday, ending its Big Ten tournament run and shot at hosting an NCAA regional.<\/p>\n
The loss stung, but Stankiewicz and his players have no choice but to focus on the journey ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t control where you\u2019re going, as far as the regional, but you could have controlled playing better baseball in those moments,\u201d Stankiewicz said. \u201cWe got to move on, though. You got to learn from that. We have to get better in those moments and get better for the future. I think that part encouraged our guys, like, \u2018Hey, man, it\u2019s baseball; it\u2019s life, sometimes.\u2019 But you can\u2019t make the same mistakes, right? You got to let those moments help you grow and get you ready for the next time they come \u2014 because they\u2019re coming again.\u201d<\/p>\n
UC Santa Barbara also made the NCAA tournament after missing the field in 2025. The No. 2-seed Gauchos will head to the Austin Regional, hosted by Texas, and will face Tarleton State on Friday at 3 p.m. PDT at UFCU Disch-Falk Field on ESPN+. Texas will host Holy Cross at 10 a.m. PDT to start the regional on SEC Network.<\/p>\n
If UCSB advances, the Gauchos would play the winner of the Eugene Regional hosted by Oregon.<\/p>\n
The 64-team NCAA tournament begins Friday with 16 double-elimination regional pools. Winners of the regionals will reach eight best-of-three super regionals. Winners of the super regionals advance to the College World Series in Omaha, where they will play in two double-elimination brackets with four teams apiece. The NCAA tournament ends with the College World Series final, which is a best-of-three series between the last two teams standing.<\/p>\n
UCLA won its lone NCAA national championship in 2013; USC has won 13, with its latest coming in 1998. UCSB has never won a national title.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, the goal isn\u2019t to get to a regional,\u201d Stankiewicz said. \u201cThe goal is to get to Omaha.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UCLA baseball team (51-6) is hosting the Los Angeles Regional as the nation\u2019s No. 1 overall seed,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10911,750,2194,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,15435,137718,14285,19904,385,137719,8936,28424,1092,3533,218],"class_list":["post-332326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-college-world-series","tag-espn","tag-goal","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-noon-friday","tag-omaha","tag-p-m-pdt","tag-regional","tag-stankiewicz","tag-texas-am","tag-uc-santa-barbara","tag-ucla","tag-usc","tag-winner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}