Florida, LSU, Kentucky wins give SEC 6 teams in NCAA baseball tournament super regionals

By ERIC OLSON
AP Sports Writer

Six of the record-tying 10 Southeastern Conference teams in the NCAA Tournament will take the next step on the “Road to Omaha.”

No. 2 national seed Florida, No. 5 LSU and No. 12 Kentucky wrapped up regionals Monday and join fellow SEC members No. 15 South Carolina, No. 16 Alabama and Tennessee in super regionals beginning Friday.

No. 8 Stanford, TCU, Duke and Southern Mississippi also won regionals Monday.

Florida advanced with a 6-0 victory over Texas Tech. The Gators had been knocked out of three straight regionals on their home field and this time had to win three straight elimination games to reach super regionals for the first time since 2018.

Ryan Slater and two relievers combined on the four-hit shutout and BT Riopelle, who had been 0 for 15 with eight strikeouts in the regional, hit a pair of two-run homers.

“Last year left a bad taste in our mouths and we didn’t want to overlook any team in this regional no matter what, and that’s exactly what we did,” Gators shortstop Josh Rivera said. “We came out here and we treated every team like it was the best team we were going to face all year and we just competed every at-bat, every pitch. It’s a blessing to be where we are right now and to understand that the job is not finished.”

Winners of the best-of-three super regionals will go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, beginning June 16.

Top-eight national seeds are assured of hosting super regionals if they win their regionals. The NCAA will announce other sites on Tuesday.

Matchups: Alabama (43-19) at No. 1 Wake Forest (50-10); South Carolina (42-19) at Florida (48-15); TCU (40-22) vs. No. 14 Indiana State (45-15); Southern Mississippi (45-18) vs. Tennessee (41-19); Oral Roberts (49-11) vs. Oregon (40-20); Texas (41-20) at Stanford (42-17) ; Duke (38-22) at No. 7 Virginia (48-12); and Kentucky (40-19) at LSU (46-15).

BIG BATS

Hayden Travinski and Cade Beloso hit back-to-back homers in the fifth inning to help LSU past Oregon State 13-7. … Braden Montgomery went 3 for 4 with a home run in Stanford’s 7-1 win over Texas A&M. … Kurtis Byrne went 4 for 5 with two homers to lead TCU past No. 3 Arkansas 12-4. Tre Richardson went deep and drove in three runs a day after he homered three times, including two grand slams, and tied the NCAA Tournament record with 11 RBIs. … Alex Stone, who homered twice against Coastal Carolina on Sunday, went deep again as Duke beat the Chanticleers 12-0. … Hunter Gilliam and Ryan Waldschmidt hit RBI doubles in the sixth inning to help Kentucky to a 4-2 win over Indiana. … Dustin Dickerson homered for the second straight game, this time hitting a tiebreaking three-run shot in the sixth inning to help Southern Mississippi past Penn 11-7.

MOUND MARVELS

Pac-12 pitcher of the year Quinn Mathews, who threw 114 pitches in seven strong innings in the regional opener against San Jose State, came back on two days’ rest to throw 66 more in four innings of shutout relief against Texas A&M. … Duke’s Alex Gow and three relievers held Coastal Carolina to one hit through eight innings in a 12-3 victory. … TCU’s Cam Brown and Ben Abeldt combined to allow three hits against Arkansas, but issued six walks. … Will Armistead struck out five while pitching 2 2/3 innings of one-hit shutout relief to finish Southern Miss’ win. … Mason Moore pitched five innings of shutout relief for Kentucky. … Florida’s Ryan Slater pitched five shutout innings in his third start of the season, and he allowed two runs over eight innings in three regional appearances.

AROUND THE HORN

The SEC also sent six teams to super regionals in 2004 and 2018. … Indiana State announced Monday it would be unable to host its super regional because of a prior commitment to host the Indiana Special Olympics for the 51st straight year. Indiana State, as a national seed, would have been in line to host against an unseeded TCU. … LSU is in supers for the eighth time since 2012 and 16th time overall, second-most to Florida State’s 17. … TCU is in supers for the first time since 2018. … Arkansas failed to get out of regionals for the first time since 2017. … Southern Miss is in supers for the second straight year under Scott Berry, who is retiring after the season. … Duke made supers for the third time since 2018. … Kentucky’s only other regional title came in 2017.

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