Oregon Ducks Baseball Reacts To Santa Barbara Regional Competition

The Oregon Ducks baseball team learned their postseason fate on Monday during the NCAA D1 Baseball Tournament Committee’s announcement of the 64-team field. Oregon finds themselves as the number three seed in the Santa Barbara regional.

Jun 2, 2023; Nashville, TN, USA; Oregon Ducks celebrate the win with the fans in the stadium against the Xavier Musketeers during the Nashville Regional at Hawkins Field. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports / Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports

After waiting for what might have seemed like an eternity, the Oregon Ducks baseball team finally learned their postseason fate on Monday during the NCAA D1 Baseball Tournament Committee’s announcement of the 64-team field.

Oregon is the No. 3 seed in the Santa Barbara regional. The Ducks will compete against No.1 seed UC Santa Barbara, No. 2 seed San Diego and No. 4 seed Fresno State.

While most analysts had the Ducks in the field as an at-large team, it was not final until the brackets were revealed.

“When you leave anything in the hands of a committee and you don’t win an automatic bid, then you leave it up for grabs,” said Oregon baseball coach Mark Wasikowski. “Did feel strong with the body of work that we had, the number of conference wins that we had, the number of conferences weekends that we won. (Over) a 14-week regular season (we) only lost two weekends at all.

"That body of work, yeah, pretty good and I think that was what merited us getting in there. And being one game out of first place (in the Pac-12). We’re happy to be into the tournament and now it’s an 0-0 like everybody else and there’s 64 great teams in there,” Wasikowski said.

Jun 2, 2023; Nashville, TN, USA; Oregon Ducks celebrate the win with the fans in the stadium against the Xavier Musketeers during the Nashville Regional at Hawkins Field. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports / Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports

Given the number of quality college baseball teams across the country, there were many considered to be “on the bubble.” Accordingly, there are just some teams that, on paper, look good but they didn’t measure up for the selection committee.

“The margin is razor thin. I think, in my experience, this is one of the most difficult years we’ve had,” revealed NCAA D1 Baseball Committee Chairman Matt Hogue. “A lot of groups of teams that had quality resume items.”

“Also, I think one thing that will be a key issue going forward is you don’t have full round robin league schedules anymore. So, we really had to dig deep — who was playing the most difficult schedule in their league, how many series did you win, especially when you had a cluster of teams maybe in the same conference.”  

“Definitely a little sigh of relief, but this is something that we’ve earned, and we’ve worked for all year,” said Ducks’ pitcher Kevin Seitter. “To act like we’re surprised — we can’t. A little nerve-racking maybe, but we had all the confidence and the faith in the world considering our resume and we’re really looking forward to the opportunity to compete.”

There is no doubt the Ducks have the physical tools to compete with anyone. They just need to be mentally prepared and ready to play their game.

 “There should be experience now in that locker room where guys have shown up in regional settings, whether it’s road or home, super-regional settings,” said coach Wasikowski. “Using that experience — I think it’s not really something you can plan out. I think it’s something that those kids gather something unique, each one of them, and then they bring to the team and the locker room what they learned and experienced.”

The Ducks (37-18) open the regional against San Diego (40-13) on Friday at 12 p.m. on ESPNU at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium. No. 14 UCSB (42-12) faces Fresno State (33-27) at 6 p.m. on Friday in the other first round game. Winners on Friday advance to play on Saturday at 7 p.m. while the two losers meet in the first game of the day at 1 p.m.