Nashville Regional, the NCAA Selection Show revealed Monday morning.
Hosted by the No. 6 team in the country, Vanderbilt, Oregon will also compete with Xavier and Eastern Illinois as the No. 3 and 4 seeds, respectively. The Ducks assured a spot in the draw with their Pac-12 Tournament championship last week.
“That’s the key, is knowing that you’re gonna see your name,” Oregon head coach Mark Wasikowski said. “There’s some others that I think, probably rightfully so, are pretty pissed off today. The only way you can avoid that is by handling your business to the best of your ability on the field.”
Notably snubbed from the field were USC and Arizona State. Arizona, which lost to Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game, made it in despite having a significantly worse regular season conference record than the Trojans and Sun Devils.
“I’m sure for some of those bubble teams, that feeling was probably pretty crazy,” Oregon left fielder Tanner Smith said. “But for us, we just knew it was a matter of time, and we were just excited to see our name called.”
The Ducks will be a No. 2 seed in the tournament for the second consecutive year after hosting a regional in 2021. They got there in a much different way than last year, however. They had a chance to host in 2022, but a poor showing in the inaugural Pac-12 tournament wiped out those hopes. This season, they likely needed to perform well in the Pac-12 tournament just to make it into the field of 64, and they went on to wash last year’s ugly taste out of their mouth with a conference championship.
“I watched the games last year, and I saw what happened,” said closer Josh Mollerus, who joined Oregon this year as a graduate transfer. “So I knew how much it meant to guys that were on the team last year to be able to come back and completely reverse the story that had been set from the previous year. I was excited both for myself, but more so for them, being able to celebrate with them.”
Mollerus was part of a bullpen that came up big in this year’s Pac-12 tournament. Oregon’s relievers combined to allow just two runs in 24 1/3 innings, helping the offense scratch out comeback wins against Cal and Stanford and hold on to win a high-scoring affair with Washington.
Mollerus pitched the final 2 2/3 innings in the miraculous victory over the Cardinal, and Matt Dallas got the final six outs of the tournament after Turner Spoljaric’s strong start on Saturday.
“Unbelievable. They pitched the lights out of it,” Wasikowski said. “In order for us to get through this tournament, hopefully all the way through the end of the College World Series, obviously pitching is a big deal. And so we’re going to need them to continue to improve.”
Oregon, which lost in the Louisville Regional last year, will head into this tournament with momentum on its side, unlike 2022, when it was hoping to reverse course. Winning the important games was a struggle for last year’s Ducks, but this year, they’ve already shown they can win those big games before the NCAA Tournament has even begun.
“Last year, being out in two, it gave us the whole week off to reassess,” Smith said. “But I think being on this side of the equation, I think it’s really well for us, for this team. We had some series canceled and some games that weren’t played. I think it was really good to play as many as we could and keep the momentum rolling.”
Oregon’s first opponent will be Xaver in a bit of a full-circle moment. The Ducks played the Musketeers in the first series of the season, sweeping them in four games. Xavier went on to have a strong season and win the Big East championship.
“It was the beginning of the year, so obviously a lot’s probably changed,” Mollerus said. “We’ll have to see how the approaches of them changed. They’re playing some good baseball right now as well, with how they played in their conference tournament. So, I mean, can’t overlook them at all, even if we did have success against them early in the year. Still gotta take it seriously. They’re gonna come out ready to compete.”
The Ducks and Musketeers will kick things off on Friday, with the time still to be determined.
“Tons of pats on the backs. Traveling, and all that kind of stuff, that was a lot of fun,” Wasikowski said. “But today’s not really about the conference tournament. That seems like it was a long time ago now. And now it’s just the excitement about getting prepared for what we have ahead.”
