If the Texas Aggies are going get back to the College World Series for the third time in the Rob Childress era, the road from College Station to Omaha will have to go through Morgantown.
Texas A&M (37-21-1) was selected as a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will take on 3-seeded Duke (31-25) Friday at 3:00 p.m. CT on ESPN2. Host West Virginia (37-20), the No. 15 overall seed who got hot in Bricktown and advanced to the Big 12 Tournament title game over the weekend to claim a regional berth, will play 4-seeded Fordham (38-22) on Friday night following the Aggies and Blue Devils.
It’s A&M’s 13th straight trip to postseason play, which more than triples the program’s second longest NCAA Tournament streak prior to the current one that started under Rob Childress in 2007.
The trip to Morgantown also marks the third consecutive year that A&M has failed to host a regional in College Station. The Aggies won the Houston Regional in 2017 before returning home for a Super Regional victory over Davidson en route to Omaha. A&M’s season came to an end in the Austin Regional last year.
The winner of the Morgantown Regional will face the winner of the Vanderbilt Regional in Super Regional action.
The SEC was awarded with six host sites. Vanderbilt is the No. 2 overall seed, Georgia is No. 4, Arkansas is No. 5, Mississippi State, is No. 6, Ole Miss is No. 12 and LSU is No. 13. The Aggies were right on the edge of the hosting bubble at the 11th hour, but the Rebels’ run in the SEC Tournament combined with the Aggies' back-to-back scoreless losses in Hoover gave the sixth host spot out of the SEC to the team from Oxford.
A more in-depth breakdown of A&M’s four-team regional is coming out later today in an NCAA Tournament edition of Diamond Notes.
