2021 NCAA Baseball Tournament Crystal Ball Predictions, Sleepers & More

Teddy Cahill and Joe Healy, our college baseball experts, look into their crystal balls to make some NCAA Tournament predictions ahead of regionals.

Regional Winners

 

REGIONAL	TEDDY	JOE
Fayetteville	Arkansas	Arkansas
Austin	Texas	Texas
Knoxville	Tennessee	Tennessee
Nashville	Vanderbilt	Vanderbilt
Tucson	Arizona	Arizona
Fort Worth	TCU	Dallas Baptist
Starkville	Mississippi State	Mississippi State
Lubbock	Texas Tech	Texas Tech
Stanford	UC Irvine	UC Irvine
South Bend	Notre Dame	Notre Dame
Columbia	Virginia	Old Dominion
Oxford	Mississippi	Mississippi
Greenville	East Carolina	East Carolina
Eugene	Oregon	Oregon
Gainesville	Florida	Florida
Ruston	Louisiana Tech	NC State

 

 

Eight for Omaha

 

TEDDY	JOE
Arkansas	Arkansas
Texas	Texas
Tennessee	Tennessee
Vanderbilt	Vanderbilt
Arizona	Arizona
Virginia	Old Dominion
Notre Dame	Mississippi State
Texas Tech	Texas Tech

National Champion

Arkansas: The Razorbacks aren’t built like a traditional national title contender but have plenty of firepower. Lefthander Patrick Wicklander has emerged as a consistent Friday starter and relief ace Kevin Kopps anchors the whole pitching staff with his performance out of the bullpen. Arkansas has a deep, athletic lineup full of players with the ability to drive the ball out of the park and a premium defense. This is the best team in the country, plain and simple. – Teddy Cahill

Arkansas: At this point, you would have to almost manufacture a reason to pick anyone else as the national title favorite. There are teams with better starting pitching, there are teams with better bullpen numbers and there are even teams with better lineups, but there is no team in the country that has a better combination of all of those things and certainly not a team better at just simply figuring out a way to win games. The Razorbacks haven’t let up at all this season and it’s increasingly difficult to imagine it happening now. – Joe Healy

Sleeper

Notre Dame: The No. 10 national seed shouldn’t be regarded as a surprise team, but I believe that if Notre Dame does go to Omaha, going through Starkville, it would surprise most around the country. The #OmaIrish shouldn’t be surprising anyone anymore, not the way they did early in the season when they were my preseason Omaha Sleeper. This is a very good team that rolled through ACC play, losing just one series, with a talented pitching staff, an elite defense and a deep lineup. – Teddy Cahill

Dallas Baptist: DBU will go into Fort Worth hot, having swept through the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. In Dominic Hamel, Rhett Kouba and Luke Eldred, it has a rotation that will match up well, and that group is at full strength now for the first time all season. But more than anything else, the Patriots’ deep lineup is well-equipped to mash its way through the postseason, taking advantage of taxed pitching staffs along the way. – Joe Healy