Maryland baseball named a three seed in the NCAA Tournament

Maryland baseball has been selected as a No. 3 seed in the Greenville regional to compete in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. This is the first time since 2017 Maryland has made the field of 64.

The Terps’ region consists of No. 1 East Carolina, No. 2 Charlotte, and No. 4 Norfolk State. These four teams will compete in a double-elimination bracket to see who moves on to super regionals. No team will be eliminated until they lose two games.

The winner of the regional will move onto super regionals, where 16 teams compete for eight spots in the College World Series.

Maryland’s first opponent will be Charlotte, who is a part of the Conference USA and is 39-19 on the year. That game will be held Friday at 6 p.m. East Carolina, the host site of the regional, has had a tremendous season, finishing with a 41-15 record.

After a disappointing start, the chances of Maryland securing a tournament bid that has eluded them for years looked bleak. At one point, they were four games under .500 and nowhere close to the top of the Big Ten standings. The Terps closed the season winning 18 of the final 22 games to complete a historic turnaround and earn a trip to the big dance.

“I’ve been doing this for a while, it’s one of the best runs I’ve been a part of as a group,” head coach Rob Vaughn told his team following the conclusion of the final regular season game on Sunday. “Now, a new season starts tomorrow.”

Maryland finished second in the conference, the team's best Big Ten regular-season finish in program history. It was also the team's best regular-season winning percentage since Vaughn took over the program in 2017 (excluding the canceled 2020 season that only consisted of 15 games).

These regional matchups will be the first team this season Maryland has faced an out-of-conference opponent. All Big Ten teams played conference-only matchups in an abbreviated 44-game season due to COVID-19.

Three Big Ten teams were selected to the field, including Nebraska as a two seed and Michigan as a three seed. The Wolverines were one of the last four in. Five other conferences had more teams selected than the Big Ten, most likely due to it being the only conference that didn’t play nonconference opponents.

Regionals will start this Friday and run through the weekend until a winner from each bracket advances, with Monday as the last possible day for games.