The Ohio State baseball team earned a No. 2 seed in its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2009, and will begin play in the Louisville region, which includes No. 2 overall seed Louisville, Wright State and Western Michigan.
The Buckeyes will face No. 3 seed Wright State, Friday at 2 p.m. on ESPN3 in their first game of the double-elimination regional.
#RoadToOmaha Louisville and Nashville Regionals pic.twitter.com/d2Zyzkrvel
— ESPNU (@ESPNU) May 30, 2016
Ohio State entered the Big Ten Tournament on the NCAA Tournament bubble. The Buckeyes needed a strong performance in the conference tournament to bolster their resume and cement themselves firmly into the NCAA Tournament field.
They did that, and then some.
Ohio State began the tournament strong, downing rival Michigan 8-3, but Greg Beals' squad fell in a 5-4 extra-innings heartbreaker to No. 8 seed Iowa in its second game to put them in the losers bracket of the double-elimination tournament.
To take home the title, the Buckeyes needed to win four straight elimination games. Miraculously, that's exactly what they did. Ohio State downed Michigan, Michigan State twice, and Iowa during a span of just over 24 hours to earn the Big Ten Tournament title, and an automatic bid to its first NCAA Tournament since 2009.
After a rocky start to the season, the Buckeyes now enter the tournament as one of the hottest teams in the country. Over the course of a month, Ohio State is just 18-4, with eight of the wins coming against ranked teams and two of the losses coming in walk-off fashion.
No "northern" school has won the NCAA Baseball title since Ohio State in 1966. 50 years later, the Buckeyes will look to do it again.
