NDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA Division III Baseball Committee has announced the 58 teams that will compete in the 2019 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship. Saint Joseph's College (32-10) is set to face Wheaton College (27-10) at Monan Park in Boston in the opening round of the double-elimination tournament on Friday, May 17th at 3:30 PM.
Saint Joseph's has earned the #3 seed while Wheaton is the #2 seed in the regional pod.
As the top seed in the four-team pod, UMass.-Boston (30-11) will serve as the pod host and faces fourth-seeded Baruch College (16-18) in the other opening round contest on Friday.
Featuring a new format this spring, the NCAA Tournament will have 16 regional sites – 13 four-team pods and three two-team locales. The four-team regionals will use a double-elimination format and the two-team regionals will play a best-of-five series.
Winners of the 16 regional tournaments will qualify for first super regional round in Division III baseball history with the teams competing in a best-of-three format Friday-Saturday, May 24-25. The eight super regional winners advance to the NCAA DIII Baseball World Series, which will be held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa starting on May 31st.
Forty conference champions qualified automatically with a pair of "Pool B" teams and 16 "Pool C" – or at-large – selections to complete the 58-team field. Pool B features programs that do not have access to an automatic qualifier while Pool C is open to all DIII teams that did not claim an automatic bid (i.e. teams that failed to win conference championships).
Saint Joseph's earned an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament after defeating Johnson & Wales, 8-7 in 11 innings, in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Championship at Fraser Field in Lynn, Massachusetts last Sunday. The Monks will be making their first NCAA tourney appearance since 2014 – and ninth in the last 14 seasons – this weekend.
Wheaton is one of 16 teams nationallyt to claim a Pool C berth as the Lyons went 0-2 in the New England Women's & Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Tournament last week. The Lyons will be making their 15th NCAA Tournament appearance - and first since 2017 – this Friday.
Wheaton is one of four New England Region programs to claim an at-large berth along with Southern Maine, Babson, and Trinity.
The winner of the UMass.-Boston pod will face the Southern Maine pod victor in the Super Regional round.
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