The Ohio State baseball team punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament over the weekend with an 8-6 win over Minnesota in the Big Ten Tournament. The Buckeyes then learned on Monday afternoon they’ll be the No. 4 seed in the Nashville Regional, where they’ll face top-seed and host Vanderbilt.
THE BRACKET 😍
📰 https://t.co/9o40NFMihV#RoadToOmaha pic.twitter.com/MhtTIajdTu
— NCAA Baseball (@NCAACWS) May 27, 2019
“We’re going to go to Vanderbilt and be ready to play,” said ninth-year head coach Greg Beals. “Our guys have faced some really good pitching over the past few weeks and are battle-tested. We’ve won a championship in front of more than 17,000 fans. My biggest thing right now is that we have a good week of training so that we are able to physically recover and prepare for a national tournament. What’s happened in the last few weeks has created some believing. That’s ultimate for anybody in competition.”
This marks the second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and third in the last four years for Ohio State.
“My message to the guys today was the same message I told back on the very first day,” Beals said. “Let’s play in a Super Regional to see who goes to Omaha. We have to win a four-team tournament first but we are now in a position to do that. We’ve been in the national tournament several years now. The next evolution is to get to a three-game series and I hope we are going to make a push at that this year.”
First pitch of Ohio State’s regional matchup with Vanderbilt is set for Friday at 7 p.m. ET. The Buckeyes and Commodores will be joined in Nashville by No. 2 Indiana State and third-seeded McNesse, and the winners of both games will face off at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
