Virginia baseball is headed to Hattiesburg.
The Cavaliers were selected as the No. 2 seed in the Hattiesburg Regional, hosted by No. 9 overall seed Southern Miss. UVA will open NCAA Tournament play on Friday, May 29 at 7 p.m. ET against No. 3 seed Jacksonville State on ESPN+, while Southern Miss will face No. 4 seed Little Rock at 2 p.m. ET earlier that day. The winner of the Hattiesburg Regional is paired with the Gainesville Regional, headlined by No. 8 national seed Florida.
For Virginia, this marks
the first NCAA Tournament appearance under first-year head coach Chris Pollard, who was hired last June after a 13-year run at Duke that included seven NCAA Tournament appearances and four Super Regional trips. The ‘Hoos enter postseason play at 36-21 after beating Duke in the ACC Tournament before falling to top-seeded Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals.
At 44-15, Southern Miss enters the NCAA Tournament with momentum after winning the Sun Belt Tournament for the third time in four seasons and completing a sweep of the league’s regular season and tournament titles for the first time since 2018.
Virginia’s opening matchup is no gimme, either. Jacksonville State comes in at 46-13 after winning the Conference USA Tournament with a 10-0 run-rule victory over Liberty in the title game. The Gamecocks have won five straight, and their recent form means Virginia will have to be sharp immediately to avoid the upset.
Little Rock rounds out the field as the No. 4 seed. They’re 36-26 and punched their ticket by winning the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament, rallying from a 6-1 deficit to beat Eastern Illinois 10-6 in the championship game. That run included six wins in five days and gave Little Rock back-to-back regional appearances for the first time in program history.
So how should Virginia feel about the draw? Cautiously optimistic, but this is far from easy. The Cavaliers avoided being sent to one of the top-eight national seeds, and earlier in the day, UVA had been projected by some to land in Georgia’s regional, with the Bulldogs ultimately earning the No. 3 overall seed. Still, Southern Miss is about as tough as it gets among the non-top-eight hosts, even if the Golden Eagles do not come from a Power Four conference. Add in a 46-win Jacksonville State team in the opener and a red-hot Little Rock team at the bottom of the bracket, and Hattiesburg will require UVA to rediscover the form that helped the Cavaliers take a series from No. 5 North Carolina earlier this season.
For a Virginia team trying to reestablish itself on the national stage in Pollard’s first season, the path is straightforward: win Friday night, preserve the pitching staff, and give itself a clean shot at what will likely be Southern Miss in the winner’s bracket. It is a manageable draw, but not a forgiving one, and UVA will need to be sharp from the first pitch.
