Virginia Hosting a Regional in D1Baseball Midseason Tournament Projections

The calendar has turned to April and even though two months still remain until the start of the 2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament, the discussions and debates have already begun about what the field of 64 will look like when it's announced on May 27th and more importantly, who will get to host regionals as top 16 seeds.

D1Baseball.com released its 2024 Midseason Field of 64 Projections on Wednesday and Virginia was one of those top 16 seeds. UVA is listed as the No. 14 overall seed and D1Baseball has the Cavaliers hosting TCU, Rutgers, and Bryant in the Charlottesville Regional at Disharoon Park. Of course, the seeds and regional matchups are bound to change quite a bit over the next two months, but it's helpful to get an idea of where things stand for the Cavaliers at this point in the season.

Based on the projection, Virginia is a safe bet to at least qualify for the NCAA Tournament, barring some massive collapse in the final six weeks of the season. D1Baseball has UVA as one of the 16 hosts, but not with a lot of room for error. The Cavaliers are closer to the edge of the top 16 than they are to cracking the coveted top 8, which are teams that would get to host Regionals and Super Regionals, playing at home all the way to the College World Series.

Virginia sits at 23-6 overall and 7-5 in ACC play, with its best result being a series win over current No. 21 Wake Forest. UVA also has a road series sweep over Pittsburgh and is 16-1 in non-conference play. The Cavaliers most recently lost two out of three on the road to No. 9 Duke last weekend and, earlier this month, suffered a bad series loss on the road to unranked Miami, a result that exposed UVA's pitching flaws that are the biggest thing holding the Hoos back right now. Virginia scored 31 total runs in that Miami series but still lost thanks to a 6-5 loss in game 1 and a disastrous 16-12 loss in game 2. UVA needed 14 runs just to avoid the sweep in game 3.

Season-ending injuries to Jack O'Connor and Bradley Hodges have played a big part in UVA's pitching struggles, which have seen some improvement in the last few weeks, but still have a ways to go. Virginia's offense is doing its job, ranking No. 4 in the country in scoring at 10.1 runs per game, but the pitching will have to catch up if the Cavaliers want to make a return trip to Omaha.

Virginia will have plenty of opportunities to either improve or tarnish its NCAA Tournament resume over the next two months. Still to come are ranked series matchups with No. 10 North Carolina, No. 19 NC State, and No. 11 Virginia Tech.

The 10th-ranked Tar Heels are in Charlottesville this weekend. Game 1 is set for Thursday at 7pm at Disharoon Park, with game 2 following on Friday at 6pm and the series wrapping up on Saturday at 1pm. Thursday's game will be televised on the ACC Network, while the other two games will stream on ACC Network Extra.