Selection Monday has occurred, and for the 3rd straight year, the Diamond Heels of UNC will host a regional as a top-8 overall seed in the NCAA Baseball Championship. UNC was named the #5 overall seed and will host #2 seed Tennessee, #3 East Carolina (winners of the American), and #4 Virginia Commonwealth (winners of the Atlantic 10).
Many projections had the Heels as a top 4 seed based on metrics like DSR and RPI, but that was ultimately given to Auburn based on the strength of their schedule and especially,
it would seem, their record against other regional hosts. The Heels’ loss in the ACC Championship to Georgia Tech probably took a little bit of weight away from their home series victory against the Jackets (the #2 overall seed), while Auburn racked up plenty of wins against high-end SEC teams. It feels a bit harsh on the Heels, but there’s not much to be done about it now.
This year’s UNC team is already familiar with two of the opponents coming to Chapel Hill. The Heels, of course, tied ECU in an early-season home-away-neutral series, with the final game being cancelled after 5 innings with the game tied 3-3. And they beat the Rams of VCU 13-3 (7 innings) in a February midweek. This will be Tennessee’s first trip to Chapel Hill since 2019, when they were similarly a 2-seed in a Chapel Hill Regional. The two teams last met in Omaha in 2024, when the 1st overall seed Vols handed UNC their first loss en route to winning the championship.
On the other side of the bracket, facing UNC in a Chapel Hill Super Regional should the Heels get out of the Regional, is #12 overall seed Texas A&M. There’s no guarantee that the Aggies get out of College Station, though; their #2 seed is USC — a 40-win team with an RPI that’s higher than Texas A&M’s. Even though they had a pretty weak schedule playing in the Big Ten, 40 wins is never something to sneeze at, and they put up a real fight against regional hosts Oregon in a late-season series. The 3rd and 4th seeds in that bracket, Lamar and Texas State, don’t figure to be that noisy.
We’ll have previews of each team in the Chapel Hill Regional, as well as a full Diamond Heels season recap and team breakdown, coming this week ahead of the beginning of the tournament. Action in Chapel Hill will begin on Friday, with the 2/3 game starting at noon Eastern and UNC’s game against VCU starting at 5:00 PM.
