UNC Baseball: Checking the Bracketology ahead of the ACC Tournament

Anytime you can get the #1 seed in a baseball conference typically as good as the ACC, you’ve probably been pretty good. This year’s North Carolina Tar Heels baseball team have, in fact, been so. Later today, they’ll kick off pool play at the ACC Tournament, after having won the Coastal Division and finished with the best record in the conference this season.

Not only has their regular season given them a good seed this week in Durham, it’s also likely set up the Tar Heels for a good seed in the NCAA Tournament. But with there still a couple days of baseball left before the field is unveiled, there’s still time for teams to play themselves up or down the bracket. Before UNC gets going this week, let’s look at where they’re currently projected to end up in the bracket, and where they could end up with a good or bad week.

The best places to look to get a sense of where Carolina likely stands in the tournament right now is the bracketologies via D1Baseball and Baseball America.

In D1Baseball’s most recent projection, the Tar Heels are listed as a regional host and the #4 overall national seed, taking on Oregon, UNC Greensboro, and Cornell. Advancing through that would match them up with the winner of the regional between #13 overall seed UC Santa Barbara, Arizona, Northeastern, or Air Force.

Meanwhile, Baseball America has the Heels as the #2 overall seed as of their Wednesday update. In that bracket, they would take on Oregon, Charleston, and Penn in the regional, and then possibly the winner of Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Northeastern, and Lamar in a super regional.

Carolina being ranked that high by both outlets suggest that they almost certainly will end up hosting a regional, even if they go out quietly this week in Durham. Frankly, being considered in the #2-4 range means they might already have potential super regional hosting duty locked up as well. Receiving one of the top eight national seeds would mean that UNC wouldn’t have to leave Chapel Hill prior to the College World Series, should they advance that far.

The likely only danger of not getting a top eight seed, or maybe even hosting duty at all, would be losing both pool play games this week at the ACC Tournament. While a loss to Wake Forest wouldn’t be the end of the world in terms of résumé, but losing to Pitt wouldn’t be the best data point to add at this stage of the game.

On the flip side, should UNC run the table and win the ACC Tournament, there could be an outside argument at them being the #1 national seed. They’re already #2 according to Baseball America. That being said, the three teams right around them in both bracket projections are Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas A&M in some order. If one of those teams wins the SEC and beats one or both of the others in the process, that might be a little hard to catch.

Either way, UNC have put themselves in very good position going into the NCAA Tournament, and that’s all you can really ask for at this point of the season.