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The Indiana Daily Student

sports baseball

Hoosiers fall to a three seed in latest postseason projections

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The IU baseball team has been in a bit of a funk recently, dropping eight of its last 10 contests, and it’s starting to show in how its regarded by national media.

After the Hoosiers dropped out of multiple national Top 25 polls earlier this week, they’ve taken a dive in the latest D1Baseball.com NCAA Tournament projection as well.

During their hot start to the season, the Hoosiers were projected as a possible regional host. In recent projections, they had been slotted as a two-seed, mainly in the Lexington Regional, where their season ended in 2017 at the hands of Kentucky.

In their newest projection, D1Baseball’s experts have moved the Hoosiers down another peg. IU now sits as the three seed in the Clemson Regional. If the projection holds true, IU will play South Carolina in the first round in the two-seed versus three-seed matchup. The other two teams in the regional would be the host, Clemson, and the Navy Midshipmen.

This regional draw could be considered pretty negative for the Hoosiers, as not only would they have to travel more than 500 miles and nearly nine hours to get there, but they’d be taking on one of the more historic programs in the SEC in South Carolina. They’d more than likely need to defeat the team that’s currently sitting in first place in the ACC, Clemson, to advance to Super Regionals as well.

The Big Ten is represented well in the projection, with five teams making the field. That is tied for the third-most teams from a single conference, trailing just the SEC (11) and the ACC (6). Minnesota is currently projected to host, Ohio State is in as a two-seed, and the trio of Iowa, Michigan and Indiana are all on the three-seed line for now. The projection also includes Purdue and Illinois as members of the first five out.

There are also several of IU’s nonconference opponents included in the projected field. Oklahoma, Coastal Carolina and Kentucky are included as two-seeds, and Louisville joined IU as a three-seed. The Hoosiers were also supposed to play Wright State, which is a projected four-seed, but the game was cancelled due to weather. 

Another Hoosier opponent, South Alabama, was named in the first five out. 

The official NCAA Tournament field is announced Monday, May 28.

Auston Matricardi

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