FSU baseball earns top-8 national seed

Update:

Florida State earned the number-7 overall seed and is paired with number-10 Clemson. That means that if both the Seminoles and the Tigers win the regionals that they’re hosting, they’ll play a best-of-three series in Tallahassee to determine which squad advances to the College World Series in Omaha.

As the top seed in the Tallahassee regional, the ’Noles will host 2-seed Mississippi State, 3-seed Oklahoma, and 4-seed Samford. Meanwhile, Clemson will play host to 2-seed Vanderbilt, 3-seed St. John’s, and 4-seed Morehead State.

Update:

As expected Florida State was announced as a regional site along with North Carolina, Clemson and NC State.

Original Story:

Another patented strong late season finish by Florida State has the ‘Noles thinking they are worthy of a top 8 National Seed in the NCAA Baseball Tournament. Earning a top 8 seed is extremely valuable because it means that the teams hosts regional and super regionals on the way to the College World Series. The Seminoles had pretty much been locked in as a top 16 regional for most of the later half of the season but were sitting just outside the top 8 because of costly road series losses to teams like Georgia Tech and Wake Forest and sitting outside the race for the regular season ACC title.

Other candidates FSU is battling are ACC regular season champion North Carolina, ASUN champion Stetson and Texas Tech. However, none of those teams can match the amount of games FSU has played against the RPI top 25 (27 games with a 16-11 record) and only 1, Stetson, has a better RPI. FSU made up a lot of ground with an end of the season series win against NC State combined with beating both NC State and Clemson on their way to the championship game in the ACC Baseball Tournament and then beating another top 25 team in Louisville.

Florida State will make it’s 56th post season appearance reaching the post season in its last 41 seasons, which is the longest active streak in college baseball. FSU will at least be a regional host for the 35th time and 8 straight years reaching the super regional round in 7 of those years. If selected the Seminoles would become a top 8 seed for the 11th time extending their current NCAA baseball record of 10.

Sunday at 8:30 PM ET the 16 regional host sites will be announced. The selection show will be broadcast on ESPNU at 12 PM ET. Check back here for updates on whether FSU will be a national seed and who they will be paired with and host. The top 16 seeds get to host the first round of the tournament with the top 8 seeds hosting the 2nd round also.