2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament Bracket: Final Projected Field Of 64

* denotes automatic bid
^ denotes regional host
Bold denotes an automatic bid that has already been clinched

Last Four In

61. TCU 
62. Florida
63. Georgia Tech 
64. Indiana

First Four Out

65. California 
66. Charleston ⬇️ 
67. Kansas State 
68. Xavier 

Next Four Out

69. James Madison
70. Louisville
71. Georgia Southern 
72. Cincinnati

When does the NCAA baseball bracket come out? 

The full field of 64 is released on Monday, May 27 at 12 p.m. ET, an event commonly referred to as “Selection Monday.” The 2024 NCAA Tournament is set to begin later that week with regionals on Friday, May 31. That sets the path to the 2024 Men’s College World Series, which begins Friday, June 14. 

Some notes about the field

I struggled with what lessons to learn from the host announcement. I always try to glean a little insight into the committee’s thinking with the host site announcement. What I learned Sunday evening was that RPI is not everything when building this field. In fact, I don’t see a through line for the hosts. There’s no one metric it seems like they’re leaning on. That’s probably a good thing, but it makes this bracketology thing harder.

Some might see Arizona hosting as good news for California. I don’t see it that way, however. Yes, the committee reached for Arizona as a host. But the Wildcats are holding two trophies and there’s no way the regional advisory committee ranked them lower than second in the Pac-12 (and there’s a decent bet they were first). To get Cal in the tournament, you have to reach into the 60s in RPI – which, fine, I didn’t think they’d reach to 31 for a host. But the problem is the teams you’d be reaching past – Cincinnati, most notably, which has such a similar resume. I think it’s a bridge too far.

The SEC has 11 bids in this projection. That would set a record and be a controversial decision. But as it stands on Sunday morning, all 11 teams won 13 SEC games and are in the top 30 of RPI and the top 25 of KPI. I believe that the committee did not go through the trouble of adding KPI and tweaking the quadrant system only to ignore it on Selection Monday. This is a potentially unprecedented season, with the SEC so powerful in every metric.

The selection committee is also being presented a situation where five teams tied in the standings with a 13-17 record. In the past, when one of those teams has been left out, it’s been easier to justify as a team that finished off the pace. This year, these teams represent the middle tier of the SEC.