Baylor Selected for NCAA Houston Regional

Baylor baseball was selected by the NCAA on Monday as the #2 seed in the Houston Regional to be played at Schroeder Park on the campus of the University of Houston. The Bears will open regional play on Friday afternoon against #3 seed Texas A&M.

This is Baylor’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2012, when Baylor reached the Super Regional and came within a couple outs of advancing to the College World Series. This is also the first NCAA Tournament under second year coach Steve Rodriguez, who reached the NCAAs eight times as the coach at Pepperdine from 2004-2015.

The draw is certainly an interesting one given the Southwest Conference history of the bracket with Houston, Baylor and Texas A&M as the top 3 seeds (Big Ten Tournament champion Iowa is the 4 seed). The Bears played the Aggies and the Cougars both earlier in the 2017 season as well. Baylor stunned A&M 6-3 with a Tucker Cascadden walkoff grand slam when the two teams met on March 5 at Minute Maid Park. The following weekend, the Bears beat Houston two out of three in a series at Baylor Ballpark, holding the UH offense to a mere three runs in the three game series.

We’ll have more later in the week to preview this weekend’s regional. It is certainly nice to have Baylor baseball back in the postseason as it should be. And perhaps the Bears can pick up some of the good mojo that the softball team is carrying right now!

A full NCAA Tournament bracket can be found here.