Arizona State among first 4 teams out in NCAA Baseball Tournament; UA going to Arkansas

Arizona State baseball made it a tough decision for the NCAA Tournament with its spotty play in the latter half of the season. Ultimately it cost the Suns Devils, who were among the first four teams left out of the tournament field during Monday's selection show.

The Sun Devils' rating percentage index was 54, but was still not enough to ignore the big losses in the second half of the season.

The Sun Devils occupied the Pac-12's top spot throughout the first half of conference play, but faced the bottom half of the conference in that span. When ASU faced the tougher part of the schedule, the team began to struggle more.

ASU took a massive series win over Oregon State, but after that, the Sun Devils were swept by Stanford and USC and dropped a series to Oregon.

The season ended on the right note with ASU taking a series from UCLA, but the pitching struggles that bubbled up in the second half showed up in the Pac-12 Tournament. With play starting on Tuesday, ASU elected to go with a bullpen game, ASU ended up losing 12-3 to Arizona.

The Sun Devils ended the tournament, and now the season, on a better note with a 14-10 win over Oregon State. ASU was unable to advance from the tournament’s pool play as a wild card, which stopped the it from making more of a case. ASU's final record is 32-23.

Arizona makes tournament field

The Arizona Wildcats (33-24) earned a spot in the Fayetteville Regional, hosted by No. 3 Arkansas, and will play No. 2 TCU (37-22) on Friday at 6 p.m. The Wildcats were one of the last four teams selected to the 64-team field.

As the No. 8 seed in a pool of nine teams, UA stunned in the Pac-12 Tournament over the weekend, upsetting No. 5 ASU, No. 2 Oregon State and No. 1 Stanford. The Wildcats made it all the way to the championship game against No. 6 Oregon, but lost in a tight 5-4 battle.

GCU tournament ends streak at 2 years

Grand Canyon fell apart in the WAC Tournament over the weekend, resulting in its streak of NCAA Tournament appearances ending at two.

The Lopes were the No. 1 seed as regular-season champ, but had to endure a two-hour wait for an earlier game to conclude before taking on No. 2 Sam Houston, which quickly settled matters by scoring 16 runs in the first three innings of a 22-8 win.

Wake Forest No. 1 overall seed for NCAA baseball tournament

Wake Forest, which leads the nation in wins and has not lost consecutive games, was named the No. 1 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament, and the Southeastern Conference had a record-tying 10 teams picked to play in regionals.

The 64-team tournament opens Friday in 16 regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha. The top eight national seeds are assured of hosting super regionals if they win their regionals.

The national seeds following Wake Forest are Florida (44-14), Arkansas (41-16), Clemson (43-17), LSU (43-15), Vanderbilt (41-18), Virginia (45-12) and Stanford (38-16).

Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Miami (40-19), Coastal Carolina (39-19), Oklahoma State (41-18), Kentucky (36-18), Auburn (34-21-1), Indiana State (42-15), South Carolina (39-19) and Alabama (40-19).

The last four teams to get bids, in alphabetical order, were Arizona (33-24), Louisiana (40-22), Oklahoma (31-26) and Troy (39-20). The first four out along with Arizona State (32-23), Kansas State (35-24), Kent State (42-16) and UC Irvine (38-17).

The SEC matched the record it set in 2014 with 10 teams making the tournament. Of those, a record eight will host regionals.

The Atlantic Coast Conference has eight teams in the field, the Big 12 has six and the Pac-12 has five teams in for the second straight season. Joining Stanford and Arizona are Pac-12 tournament champion Oregon, No. 2 seed in the Nashville Regional; Oregon State, No. 2 seed in the Baton Rouge Regional and Washington, No. 3 seed in the Stillwater Regional.

Wake Forest has been dominant on the mound and offensively. The Demon Deacons are led by two-time ACC pitcher of the year Rhett Lowder and are first nationally with a 2.82 ERA and nine shutouts. Brock Wilken (27) and Nick Kurtz (23) have combined for 50 of Wake Forest’s 110 home runs, and the Deacons are averaging 8.9 runs per game.

Other notes about the tournament:

—Vanderbilt has the longest active streak with its 17th straight appearance. Texas is in the tournament for a record 62nd time. Florida State (23-31) saw its record-tying streak of regional appearances end at 44.

—Tulane (19-40), which won the American Athletic Conference Tournament as the No. 7 seed, has the most losses of any team to ever make the national tournament.

—Summit League champion Oral Roberts is on the longest win streak in the nation, at 18 games. Clemson has won 16 in a row.

—Connecticut is in a regional for a fifth straight time for the first time since the 1950s.

—There are no teams making their first appearances, but Penn is in for the first time since 1995, Santa Clara for the first time since 1997 and San Jose State for the first time since 2002.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona State not picked for NCAA baseball tourney; UA sent to Arkansas