B1G Baseball

Boilers Hosting, Spartans Heading West

For the first time since 2009, multiple teams from the Big Ten are heading to a regional in the NCAA Tournament. Announced yesterday as one of the 16 hosting institutes, Purdue will be competing in its first regional since 1987, second overall, as the Boilermakers will be the one-seed in the Gary Regional. Heading out of the region, Michigan State will be making its first NCAA appearance since 1979. The Spartans were selected to the field of 64 as the three-seed in the Palo Alto Regional.

After winning the programs first conference championship since 1909, Purdue secured a bid to NCAA play on Saturday after finishing its sweep through the Big Ten Tournament with a 6-5 win over Indiana. Purdue’s first tournament championship, garnered the Big Ten’s automatic bid.

With their dual championships, a 44-12 record and ninth-rated RPI by Boyd’s World, Purdue was selected as the first team from the Big Ten to host a regional since Michigan in 2008. Joining the Boilermakers in Gary will be two-seed Kentucky, an at-large selection from the SEC, the Mid-American Conference’s auto-bid winner, Kent State, and four-seed Valparaiso, Purdue’s Friday opponent and the winner of the Horizon League tournament.

There was no certainty that Michigan State would make it a multi-bid season for the Big Ten. Heading into Monday, ESPN.com and SEBaseball.com projected the Spartans in the tournament while Baseball America and Perfect Game did not. The Spartans finished the regular season with a 37-21 record and the 45th-rated RPI, but Michigan State’s spot on the bubble was contentious as a 13-11 record and fifth-place finish in the Big Ten was viewed by national media as reason for excluding the Spartans from the tournament.

In response to their selection, NCAA selection committee chairman Kyle Kallander alluded to what little margin Michigan State had, that the Spartans were one of the last five teams in the tournament. In Michigan State’s favor Kallander said was the non-conference schedule one that saw them play three games at Texas A&M in addition to defeating no. four national seed Baylor, as well as being the second-best team in the region behind Purdue in the mind of regional coaches.

Making their fifth NCAA appearance,  Michigan State will join one-seed Stanford, the hosts of the Palo Alto Regional and at-large selection from the Pac-12, take on two-seed Pepperdine on Friday the West Coast Conference’s auto-bid recipient, and see the regional field rounded out by Fresno State, the automatic selection from the Western Athletic Conference.

The opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament features 16 four-team Regionals in a double-elimination format. Regional play runs from June 1-4 with the 16 winners advancing to Super Regionals. The eight two-team Super Regional sites will be determined on Monday, June 4, with play scheduled for June 8-10 or June 9-11 in best-of-three series. The Men’s College World Series will take place June 15-26 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb.

The Big Ten last saw multiple teams competing in the NCAA Tournament in 2009 when Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio State all participated in an NCAA Regional. Michigan’s 2007 trip to Corvallis marks the last time a Big Ten team competed in a Super Regional. The conference has not sent a team to Omaha since 1984 when Michigan was the last Big Ten team to participate in the College World Series.

All games of the Palo Alto Regional will be aired live on ESPN3.com. The entire field of 64 and regional brackets can be found here.

Big Ten Tournament headed to Minneapolis, Omaha

Big Ten Announces Sites for Future Baseball Tournaments

Park Ridge, Ill. – The Big Ten Conference announced on Friday the sites for its 2013 and 2014 baseball tournaments. The 2013 Big Ten Baseball Tournament will be held at Target Field in Minneapolis, the home of Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins, marking the first time that the event will be held at a Major League Baseball facility. The 2014 tournament will be held at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb., the site of the NCAA Division I Men’s College World Series.

The Big Ten Baseball Tournament has been played as a neutral-site event in Columbus, Ohio, since 2009. The event was held at Huntington Park, the home of the Triple-A Columbus Clippers, in 2009 and 2011 and will be played at that ballpark May 23-26, 2012. The tournament was held at Ohio State’s Bill Davis Stadium in 2010. Prior to 2009, the Big Ten Baseball Tournament was played at the site of the regular-season champion or the champion from a pre-selected division, with the exception of 1993 and 1994, when it was held in Battle Creek, Mich.

Five different teams have won the Big Ten Tournament in the event’s 31 years. Minnesota leads all Big Ten teams with nine tournament titles, Michigan and Ohio State each have eight, Illinois has four, and Indiana has two.

The 2013 tournament will be the seventh played in Minneapolis, as Minnesota hosted the event in 1984, 1986, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004. The 2014 tournament will be the Big Ten’s first in Omaha and the state of Nebraska.

Tickets for the 2012 Big Ten Baseball Tournament at Huntington Park in Columbus, Ohio, are on sale now. Visit www.bigten.org for more information.

About the Big Ten Conference

The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in student-athletes’ lives and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness. Big Ten universities provide in excess of $100 million in athletic scholarship aid to more than 8,700 men and women student-athletes who compete for 25 championships, 12 for men and 13 for women. Conference institutions sponsor broad-based athletic programs with more than 270 teams. For more information, visit www.bigten.org.

About Target Field

Target Field, one of America’s most urban ballparks, is located in the historic Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis. In 2011, the Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily named Target Field the Sports Facility of the Year. In 2010, ESPN The Magazine ranked Target Field as the best stadium experience in all professional sports in North America. Designed by POPULOUS with Mortenson Construction serving as construction manager, the 39,500 seat ballpark was completed in 2010. For more information on Target Field, visit www.twinsbaseball.com/targetfield.

About TD Ameritrade Park

Home to the NCAA Division I Men’s College World Series and Creighton Bluejays baseball, TD Ameritrade Park Omaha seats approximately 24,000, including luxury suites and club seats, and feature a 360-degree walk-around concourse for a perfect view of the field. The stadium is also home to the Red Sky Music Festival held in July. TD Ameritrade Park Omaha opened in April 2011. It is managed by the Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority. For more information about TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, visit www.tdameritradeparkomaha.com.