2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket: Projected Field Of 64 (April 3)

As the college baseball season hits the halfway point, 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 very much 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 starting to be instructive. Teams are still capable of making big gains (or losses) but that largely now is down to extended performance trends and not one weekend series.

You can find last week’s projection here.

NCAA Baseball Bracket

PROJECTED FIELD OF 64
Fayetteville, Ark.		Conway, S.C.
1. (1) Arkansas ^*		1. (16) Coastal Carolina^*
2. Kansas State		2. Duke
3. Arizona		3. Georgia
4. Arkansas-Little Rock*		4. UNC Greensboro*

Clemson, S.C.		Lexington, Ky.
1. (2) Clemson^*		1. (15) Kentucky^
2. Northeastern*		2. Indiana State*
3. Kennesaw State*		3. Xavier*
4. Bryant*		4. Bowling Green State*

Tallahassee, Fla.		Columbia, S.C.
1. (3) Florida State^		1. (14) South Carolina^
2. Oregon		2. Virginia Tech
3. Kansas		3. Louisiana
4. Columbia*		4. SC-Upstate*

College Station, Texas		Dallas
1. (4) Texas A&M^		1. (13) Dallas Baptist^*
2. TCU		2. Oklahoma
3. Creighton		3. UC Santa Barbara
4. Sacred Heart*		4. Lamar*

Knoxville, Tenn.		Greenville, N.C.
1. (5) Tennessee^		1. (12) East Carolina^*
2. Southern Miss		2. NC State
3. Wake Forest		3. Maryland
4. Niagara*		4. Grand Canyon*

Corvallis, Ore.		Stillwater, Okla.
1. (6) Oregon State^*		1. (11) Oklahoma State^*
2. Texas		2. Nebraska*
3. Portland*		3. LSU
4. North Dakota State*		4. Fresno State*

Chapel Hill, N.C.		Nashville
1. (7) North Carolina^		1. (10) Vanderbilt^
2. Mississippi State		2. UC Irvine*
3. Campbell		3. Utah
4. Army*		4. Northern Kentucky*

Gainesville, Fla.		Charlottesville, Va.
1. (8) Florida^		1. (9) Virginia^
2. UCF		2. Alabama
3. Miami		3. West Virginia
4. Bethune-Cookman*		4. VCU*

* denotes automatic bid
^ denotes regional host

Last Four In

West Virginia
Campbell
Arizona
Kansas

First Four Out

Texas Tech
St. John’s
Georgia Southern
Arizona State

Next Four Out

Rutgers
Mississippi
Louisiana Tech
Wichita State

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, Oklahoma State is not ranked in the Top 25 but is listed here as the No. 11 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 two months from now. We also use different inputs. For example, the committee cares much more about RPI than we do.

So, when I project Oklahoma State to be the No. 11 overall seed but we don’t rank them in the Top 25, the rationale is that we don’t think the Cowboys have produced one of the 25 best bodies of work right now but in two months time, when the selection committee evaluates their resume (which I project to include the Big 12 title), the committee will award them a hosting spot. Remember, the emphasis is on projected.

The Big 12 has eight bids in this projection but just one host. The conference is in a strange place right now. It has 10 teams in the top 75 of RPI but only one in the top 20 and that one is UCF, which is just 6-6 in conference play. Someone is going to host from the league and if the right teams play well in the second half, it could get multiple hosts. Picking who that will be at this stage of the season is hard, however.

A big part of the reason it’s hard to pick the team that will emerge is because of the league’s parity, which might hurt hosting chances but is definitely helping to create more potential at-large teams. The conference gets eight bids in this projection, which would be its most since it got eight teams in the 2009 tournament. Nearly every team in the Big 12 is still in the hunt.

There are three new hosts in this week’s projection. Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma State all move up to the host line this week. Oklahoma State replaced Oklahoma as the Big 12’s representative after the Sooners were swept at home by Lamar. Kentucky (24-4, 8-1) and North Carolina (25-4, 10-2) both scored road conference sweeps that helped solidify their already strong starts to league play and top-10 RPIs. It’s early but I feel very good about both team’s hosting chances.