NCAA Baseball Tournament projections: Arizona Wildcats dropped to a regional 2-seed

After the Arizona Wildcats dropped to 19th or 21st in the various human polls, it’s not surprising to see the two places that do weekly NCAA Tournament projections drop the Cats out of a hosting position.

But it is kind of surprising to see the resounding agreement on Arizona’s new position.

Baseball America and D1Baseball are the two most reputable Field of 64 projections, and both have Arizona heading to Long Beach for the first weekend of Regional play.

They also both have that Regional paired with the Corvallis Regional.

Here’s a look at the scenario Baseball America sees playing out right now:

And here’s what D1Baseball has this week:

As of Wednesday afternoon, Long Beach State was ranked 23rd in the RPI according to Warren Nolan. Arizona was 13th. If things stay that way over the final four weekends of the season, the selection committee would likely give Tucson a Regional over Long Beach based on recent history. Only one team outside of the RPI top 20 has been named a regional host in the past five years.

Oregon State has essentially become a lock to be a national seed, having only lost four games all year, and have now been the consensus No. 1 team in the rankings for six weeks in a row. Stanford basically took over the Tucson regional this week in both projections, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Cardinal and Wildcats do comparatively the rest of the way.

After a very strong start to the year, a six-game Pac-12 losing streak has obviously put the Wildcats on the hosting bubble. Still plenty of time to play their way back into a hosting situation, and certainly you’d want to be protected from having to travel to Corvallis in that second weekend.