PROVIDENCE, R.I. – After winning its second American Athletic Conference Baseball Championship on Saturday, ECU (43-16) was selected as one of 16 regional hosts for the 72nd annual NCAA Division I Baseball Championship, as announced by the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee on Sunday night. It marks the second-straight year that an American Athletic Conference team will host a regional, as the Pirates become the third conference program to be chosen as a host. A conference team has hosted a regional in four of the past five seasons.
Competition for the Greenville Regional will begin on Friday, June 1 with a pair of games. The remaining at-large teams, top-16 national seeds, first-round regional pairings and site assignments will be announced at Noon (ET), Monday, May 28. The one-hour program will be shown live on ESPNU.
ECU hosted a regional at Clark-LeClair Stadium in 2009, and also hosted opening round regional tournaments on two occasions at different venues. Houston (2017 and 2015) and Louisville (2014) are the two other American Athletic Conference teams to have hosted a regional over the league’s five-year span.
Each regional field features four teams, playing a double-elimination format. All 16 regionals are scheduled to be conducted from Friday, June 1, to Monday, June 4. Start times for each game will be determined once television broadcast selections have been finalized.
Thirty-one (31) Division I conferences receive an automatic berth in the field of 64, along with 33 at-large selections. The College World Series (CWS) begins play Saturday, June 16, at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb.