2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket: Projected Field Of 64 (April 24)

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 largely instructive at this stage of the season. If a team has RPI problems now, it is running out of time to correct them. On the flip side, if a team has already established itself at the upper end of the rankings, it will take more than one or two losses to push them out of that range.

2024 NCAA Baseball Bracket

PROJECTED FIELD OF 64
College Station, Texas		Nashville
1. (1) Texas A&M^*		1. (16) Vanderbilt^
2. Louisiana*		2. Oklahoma State
3. Lamar*		3. Southern Miss
4. North Dakota State*		4. Western Kentucky*

Fayetteville, Ark.		Columbia, S.C.
1. (2) Arkansas^		1. (15) South Carolina^
2. Oregon		2. Virginia
3. Kansas State		3. Northeastern
4. Arkansas-Little Rock*		4. Samford*

Clemson, S.C.		Durham, N.C.
1. (3) Clemson^*		1. (14) Duke
2. UNC Wilmington*		2. West Virginia
3. Kennesaw State*		3. UConn*
4. Sacred Heart*		4. VCU*

Lexington, Ky.		Terre Haute, Ind.
1. (4) Kentucky^		1. (13) Indiana State^*
2. UC Santa Barbara		2. Arizona
3. Ohio State		3. Xavier
4. Bowling Green State*		4. Grand Canyon*

Knoxville, Tenn.		Norman, Okla.
1. (5) Tennessee^		1. (12) Oklahoma^*
2. San Diego*		2. Dallas Baptist
3. Virginia Tech		3. Alabama
4. Wright State*		4. Niagara*

Chapel Hill, N.C.		Corvallis, Ore.
1. (6) North Carolina^		1. (11) Oregon State^*
2. Mississippi State		2. UC Irvine*
3. Utah		3. Texas
4. Bryant*		4. Fresno State*

Tallahassee, Fla.		Conway, S.C.
1. (7) Florida State^		1. (10) Coastal Carolina^
2. Texas Tech		2. Georgia
3. Florida		3. California
4. Bethune-Cookman*		4. S.C.-Upstate*

Greenville, N.C.		Winston-Salem, N.C.
1. (8) East Carolina^*		1. (9) Wake Forest^
2. NC State		2. Nebraska*
3. James Madison		3. UCF
4. Army*		4. Columbia*

* denotes automatic bid
^ denotes regional host

Last Four In

Florida
Utah
Ohio State
Texas

First Four Out

TCU
Illinois
Louisville
Louisiana Tech

Next Four Out

Mississippi
Georgia Tech
Charleston
Kansas

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

One big changes on the host line this week. Wake Forest returns and vaults up the seed line in this projection. The Demon Deacons are now playing much better and while their remaining conference schedule is difficult (at Notre Dame, Clemson, at NC State), I don’t think it’s too much to say that they should go at least 5-4 in that stretch. Do that and take care of business in non-conference action and they’ll have both a winning ACC record and a top-15 or better RPI. That’s a host.

It is an overreaction to say today that the bubble is bad. It is far too early to seriously project and evaluate the bubble. Last year at this time, Auburn was 7-11 in SEC play and UCLA was 10-7-1 in Pac-12 play. The Tigers were 39 in RPI, UCLA was 42. One of those teams ended up hosting, while the other didn’t come close to the tournament field. There’s a lot of baseball left to be played and the true nature of how forgiving the bubble is won’t be known until conference tournaments get underway. So, don’t worry about bubble talk in June. If your favorite team is in that range, just worry about them winning games at this stage.

There is no harder team to evaluate in the field than Texas. This will probably sort itself out in the next month, as with the bubble overall. But the Longhorns are No. 68 in RPI, well outside the range for an at-large team, and have eight quadrant four losses, more than any other team in the top 100 of RPI. But they’re 11-7 in Big 12 play and tied for second in the conference standings.

I’ve included them in the field and think that given their finishing slate (at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, at UCF, Kansas), going .500 and winning at least once in the Big 12 Tournament should get them the RPI fix they need. But it’s not an easy slate and Texas has little margin for error. Just ask Kansas State and Southern California, which both got left out of the field last year with winning conference records (13-11 for the Wildcats and 17-13 for the Trojans), but RPIs north of 50.