Maryland to host NCAA baseball tournament regional for first time in program history

Maryland was selected as an NCAA baseball tournament regional site Sunday for the first time in program history. 

College Park will be one of the 16 regional hosts, with the games starting Friday, June 3, at Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium. 

Maryland (45-12) earned the 15th seed Monday and will host second-seeded Wake Forest, third-seeded UConn and fourth-seeded Long Island. On Friday, Maryland faces Long Island at 7 p.m on ESPN+, with Wake Forest and UConn to play at 1 p.m. on ESPNU 

Being a regional site host comes on the heels of the Terrapins’ best regular season in school history. Maryland won a program-record 45 games and its first-ever Big Ten championship. It will be the second straight tournament appearance for the Terrapins, fifth since 2014 and eighth in program history. The Terrapins are 24-2 in College Park, which is good for the most home victories in school history.

The Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference each had four teams selected as regional sites.

Each regional will be made up of four teams playing in a double-elimination format. All are scheduled from Friday through Monday. Regional winners advance to best-of-three super regionals, and those eight winners go on to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 17.

Tennessee (53-7) is expected to be the No. 1 overall seed after sweeping the SEC regular-season and tournament championships.

Other SEC hosts are Auburn (37-19), Florida (39-22) and Texas A&M (37-18).

The ACC hosts are Louisville (38-18-1), Miami (39-18), North Carolina (38-19) and Virginia Tech (41-12).

The Big 12 has hosts in Oklahoma State (39-12) and Texas (42-18), and the Pac-12 has two in Oregon State (44-12) and Stanford (40-14).

Other hosts are East Carolina (42-18) of the American Athletic Conference, Southern Mississippi (43-16) of Conference USA and Georgia Southern (40-18) of the Sun Belt Conference.

Texas is hosting for the 29th time, while Georgia Southern, like Maryland, is a first-time host.

Miami is hosting for the 28th time, but the first since time since 2016. Stanford is hosting for the 20th time.

East Carolina, Florida, Stanford, Tennessee and Texas hosted last year.

This article is based in part on wire service reports.