2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket: Projected Field Of 64 (April 17)

As the college baseball season pushes on toward Selection Monday, the Road to Omaha is taking shape. While there’s still a lot of baseball to be played, it’s not too early to break down the postseason picture.

At this time of year, the emphasis is still on “projected.” This is not meant to be how the tournament would be seeded if it started tomorrow. Instead, it is meant to illustrate what it might be expected to look like on Selection Monday.

RPI, the primary metric the selection committee uses to build the field, is becoming more instructive. Teams are still capable of making significant gains (or losses) but the data is starting to become clearer and more hard bound.

PROJECTED FIELD OF 64
College Station, Texas		Conway, S.C.
1. (1) Texas A&M^*		1. (16) Coastal Carolina^
2. Lamar*		2. Duke
3. TCU		3. Mississippi State
4. North Dakota State*		4. Kennesaw State*

Clemson, S.C.		Nashville
1. (2) Clemson^*		1. (15) Vanderbilt^
2. Georgia		2. Louisiana*
3. Georgia Southern		3. Virginia Tech
4. Columbia*		4. Samford*

Fayetteville, Ark.		Terre Haute, Ind.
1. (3) Arkansas^		1. (14) Indiana State^*
2. Oregon		2. UC Irvine*
3. Texas		3. Ohio State
4. Arkansas-Little Rock*		4. Wright State*

Tallahassee, Fla.		Norman, Okla.
1. (4) Florida State^		1. (13) Oklahoma^
2. UCF		2. Dallas Baptist*
3. Florida		3. Utah
4. Bethune-Cookman*		4. Grand Canyon*

Lexington, Ky.		Columbia, S.C.
1. (5) Kentucky^		1. (12) South Carolina^
2. Texas Tech		2. Wake Forest
3. Indiana		3. Northeastern*
4. Bowling Green State*		4. S.C.-Upstate*

Knoxville, Tenn.		Stillwater, Okla.
1. (6) Tennessee^		1. (11) Oklahoma State^*
2. NC State		2. Nebraska*
3. Creighton		3. San Diego
4. Bryant*		4. Niagara*

Chapel Hill, N.C.		Greenville, N.C.
1. (7) North Carolina^		1. (10) East Carolina^*
2. Arizona		2. Alabama
3. Kansas State		3. Southern Miss
4. Army*		4. VCU*

Corvallis, Ore.		Charlottesville, Va.
1. (8) Oregon State^*		1. (9) Virginia^
2. UC Santa Barbara		2. West Virginia
3. Portland*		3. UConn*
4. Fresno State*		4. Sacred Heart*

* denotes automatic bid
^ denotes regional host

Last Four In

Georgia Southern
TCU
Texas
Indiana

First Four Out

Illinois
James Madison
UNC Wilmington
Mississippi

Next Four Out

Georgia Tech
Boston College
Georgetown
Maryland

When does the NCAA baseball bracket come out?

The full field of 64 is released on Monday, May 27 at 12 p.m. ET, an event commonly referred to as “Selection Monday.” The 2024 NCAA Tournament is set to begin later that week with regionals on Friday, May 31. That sets the path to the 2024 NCAA College World Series, which begins Friday, June 14.

Some notes about the field

If you look at this week’s Top 25 and this projection, you will notice they do not align.

Most notably, Indiana State is not ranked in the Top 25 but is listed here as the No. 14 overall seed.

The Top 25 and Projected Field of 64 have different purposes. The Top 25 is meant to rank how we view the 25 best teams in the country in the moment. The Projected Field of 64 is meant to be a projection of how the selection committee will build the NCAA Tournament six weeks from now. We also use different inputs. For example, the committee cares much more about RPI than we do. So, when I project Indiana State to host but we don’t rank it in the Top 25, the rationale is that we don’t think the Sycamores have produced one of the 25 best bodies of work right now but when the selection committee evaluates their resume (which I project to include the Missouri Valley title), the committee will award them a hosting spot. Remember, the emphasis is on projected.

There are two new hosts in this week’s field and both are returning to host status. Oklahoma and South Carolina move up after strong weekends – the Gamecocks won a series at Florida and the Sooners swept Kansas State. South Carolina has strong metrics working in its favor and really just needs to produce 16 SEC wins—I believe it will get there. Oklahoma ranks No. 2 in strength of schedule and while its RPI dipped out of the top 20 after a loss Tuesday, it’s still in first place in the Big 12 and has nine quad 1 wins—only Clemson and Kentucky have more. RPI does not like the Big 12 as a whole—only UCF ranks as a top 20 team—but I expect the other metrics and the respect the Big 12 will garner in the regional advisory committee process will give the Sooners a boost.

The bubble is, in short, a mess. That’s somewhat to be expected at this stage. But in the top 50 of RPI, there are several teams that are deeply underwater in their conference records—Auburn (2-13, No. 35) and Notre Dame (2-16, No. 45) in particular stand out. Outside the top 60, there’s Oregon (10-5, No. 63) and Texas (9-6, No. 76).

The teams that have conference records well below .500 aren’t going to be saved by their RPI and teams outside the top 60 are highly unlikely to get at-large bids – being outside even the top 50 on Selection Monday isn’t particularly advisable. Some of this will work itself out in the coming weeks, but it makes projecting a field quite difficult at this stage. For now, I’m willing to look past the RPI shortcomings of Mississippi State (57), Oregon and Texas and include all three in the field – Oregon comfortably so – but a month from now, if the metrics haven’t improved, it will be a different story.