Big Ten Tournament champion Maryland is headed to the NCAA Regionals for the third year in a row and will play in the Winston-Salem Regional starting on Friday.
The Terrapins (42-19), who won the Big Ten Tournament on Sunday, play Northeastern (44-14) on Friday at 1 p.m. Regional host Wake Forest, which leads the nation in wins, is the No. 1 overall seed and will play fourth-seeded George Mason at 7 p.m. The games will air on ESPN+.
The Terrapins beat Northwestern, 9-2, on May 9 in the two teams’ first-ever meeting. Former ACC rivals Maryland and Wake Forest have played 163 times, including in last season’s College Park Regional. A 10-5 win over the Demon Deacons sent the Terrapins to the national championship game against UConn. The Terrapins and George Mason have played 53 times with Maryland winning twice last season.
Maryland went 17-7 in the regular season and won the Big Ten regular season for the second straight year and captured the Big Ten Tournament championship for the first time ever.
The Southeastern Conference had a record-tying 10 teams picked to play in regionals.
The 64-team tournament opens Friday in 16 regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha.
The top eight national seeds are assured of hosting super regionals if they win their regionals.
“To be the No. 1 national seed is a tremendous accomplishment for our program,” Wake Forest coach Tom Walter said. “To do that, you have to demonstrate both consistency and toughness. We have battled through four season-ending injuries on the mound, four temporary injuries to key position players and rebounded quickly from tough losses.”
The national seeds following Wake Forest are Florida (44-14), Arkansas (41-16), Clemson (43-17), LSU (43-15), Vanderbilt (41-18), Virginia (45-12) and Stanford (38-16).
Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Miami (40-19), Coastal Carolina (39-19), Oklahoma State (41-18), Kentucky (36-18), Auburn (34-21-1), Indiana State (42-15), South Carolina (39-19) and Alabama (40-19).
The last four teams to get bids, in alphabetical order, were Arizona (33-24), Louisiana (40-22), Oklahoma (31-26) and Troy (39-20). The first four out were Arizona State (32-23), Kansas State (35-24), Kent State (42-16) and UC Irvine (38-17).
The SEC matched the record it set in 2014 with 10 teams making the tournament. Of those, a record eight will host regionals.
The Atlantic Coast Conference has eight teams in the field, the Big 12 has six and the Pac-12 has five.
Division I Baseball Committee chairman John Cohen, the Auburn athletic director, acknowledged eight SEC hosts is “a big number” but noted that league teams combined to win 81.1% of their nonconference games.
“There was no discussion about (how) we need this many teams from the SEC or there’s too many or not enough,” Cohen said. “We do not do that with any leagues. No one is keeping a running total because if you are, you’re not picking the best teams.”
Wake Forest has been dominant on the mound and offensively and is the first ACC team awarded the top national seed since North Carolina in 2013.
The Demon Deacons are led by two-time ACC pitcher of the year Rhett Lowder and are first nationally with a 2.82 ERA and nine shutouts. Brock Wilken (27) and Nick Kurtz (23) have combined for 50 of Wake Forest’s 110 home runs, and the Deacons are averaging 8.9 runs per game.
They’ve been on the rise since going 20-27 two seasons ago. They made a regional and were 41-19-1 last year, and this year they started 26-3 on their way to their first ACC regular-season championship since 1963.
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