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NCAA Baseball Tournament 2014 bracket: Clemson joins Vandy, Xavier, and Oregon in Nashville Regional

By FIGUREFOUR

Clemson heads to the Nashville regional where they will compete with the likes of Xavier, Oregon, and, of course, Vandy.  We've discussed the issues and relative disappointment of this season's Clemson squad. Coming into this season we thought this Clemson team was one with enough talent to get to Omaha.  We certainly expected to host a Regional and thought we would be at a minimal challenging to host a Super.  We knew Tiger pitching would be a strength and were concerned about putting runs on the board with this offense.  Those fears have played out and instead of hosting for part of this tournament, the Tigers needed a walk-off ACC Tournament win against Miami to assure they simply got an invite.  Needless to say there is a lot of concern about this program and the fan apathy surrounding the program's leadership after the debacle we've seen to date.

Though we are not in a regional with a Top 8 team, there is plenty to be concerned about in Nashville.  Vandy (obviously the regional #1 seed) is stout and will be tough to dethrone--especially at home.  Oregon fills the #2 seed, Clemson #3, and Xavier #4.  Winner of the Nashville Regional plays the winner of the Bloomington Regional where Indiana is the top seed.  Clemson will need its quality pitching to continue and the bats to wake up--especially with runners in scoring position.

Here is where you can find an interactive tournament bracket courtesy www.ncaa.com.  This interactive bracket is pretty useful and should be updated regularly to show how all 64 teams fare.

Below are a few basic items about this year's NCAA Tournament:

– 64-team bracket divided into 16 regionals

– Regionals: 4 teams, double-elimination (winners advance to Super Regionals)

– Super Regionals: best-of-3 series

– All 8 winners of Super Regionals advance to College World Series.

– All games televised on ESPN family of networks.

No. 1 national seed: Oregon State
No. 2 national seed: Florida
No. 3 national seed: Virginia
No. 4 national seed: Indiana
No. 5 national seed: Florida State
No. 6 national seed: Louisiana-Lafayette
No. 7 national seed: TCU
No. 8 national seed: LSU

Here are some interesting facts about this year's tournament:

– Florida: 6th national seed with 20 losses (4 of previous 5 reached CWS)

– Florida State: national seed for 10th time (most all-time)

– UL Lafayette and TCU are national seeds for 1st time

– 60% of national seeds reach the College World Series

We'll look closer into Clemson baseball and the tournament in general prior to action.  Feel free to use this post as an open thread to discuss Clemson baseball and how they will fare in this tournament.

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