West Chester Slides Into No. 1 Spot in Atlantic Region Poll
INDIANAPOLIS, IND – West Chester University's baseball team moved up one notch into the top spot in the most recent NCAA Atlantic Region rankings released Wednesday afternoon.
West Chester (39-7), preparing to take on Mercyhurst in the first round of the 2024 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) postseason tournament this afternoon, is the new No. 1 after beating previous No. 1 Millersville four times last weekend in the final week of the regular season.
The Golden Rams were ranked No. 2 last week. However, they will now see if they hold onto that No. 1 seed when the field for the NCAA Division II Baseball Tournament is announced late Sunday night. The top two seeds in the region will host a first round pod. The top ranked team will have two other schools in its pod while the No. 2 seed will have three other schools in its pod.
Those regional pods will be a double-elimination format. The winners at each site will advance to the Atlantic Super Regional, which will be hosted by the highest remaining seed between the two advancing schools. That format will be a Best-of-3 series with the winner declared the Atlantic Region Champion, who will then advance to the NCAA Division II Championships in Cary, N.C.
The regional round will take place Thursday, May 16 through Saturday, May 19. The Super Regionals will follow on Friday, May 24 and Saturday, May 25.
The eight teams advancing to the championship finals in Cary, N.C., will be seeded by the national committee, using the established selection criteria, and placed in the bracket. The final bracket will be released on NCAA.com on Saturday, May 25.
The championship games will take place Saturday, June 1 through Saturday, June 8 at USA Baseball Training Complex. The University of Mount Olive and the Town of Cary are the hosts.
Millersville slipped to No. 2 while East Stroudsburg stayed at No. 3 this week. Seton Hill is at four, Charleston (W.Va.) is the five. Those two teams would be the ones that come to West Chester, if the seedings were to hold up by Sunday night. Indiana (Pa.) is ranked sixth while Frostburg State is seventh. Just out of the top seven spots that make the regional are Slippery Rock and Shippensburg, respectively.
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