The Miami Hurricanes are headed to their forty-first straight post-season, earning a two-seed in the Louisville Regional. UM will face three-seed Oklahoma State at 2:00pm ET on Friday. The host Louisville Cardinals are the top-seed, taking on the fourth-seeded Bowling Green Falcons later in the evening.
The winner of the Louisville Regional will face the winner of the Nashville Regional, which should be the Commodores as they’re the overall two-seed. Vanderbilt finished the season 51-9 and will face East Tennessee State in the opening round, while Georgia Tech and Illinois round out the foursome.
Miami brings a 36-23 record into the post-season as well as a 14-16 conference regular season record, prior to a 1-2 showing at the recent ACC Tournament.
The conference as a whole proved on fire this year, as the ACC makes up five of the sixteen regional host sites this weekend as Florida State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Virginia Tech all earned bids. Eight ACC squads made the final sixty-four, the second-most in any conference nationwide.
Congrats to the Canes for reaching the post-season and keeping the streak alive. This hasn’t been a memorable year for Miami baseball, but pride is still on the line and reaching the NCAA Tournament is something that deserves credit.
Furthermore, the Louisville regional isn’t as daunting as some recent Miami post-season road trips. If Hurricane bats can get hot, there’s no reason UM can’t make some noise this weekend.
Miami doesn’t have the make-up of a College World Series squad this year, but based on playing in a tough conference and facing some of the nation’s best teams all season, getting to a Super Regional shouldn’t be out of the cards.