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Oregon St. No. 1 seed for NCAA baseball tournament

OMAHA, Neb. >> Oregon State is the No. 1 national seed for the NCAA baseball tournament.

The Division I Baseball Committee on Monday made the Pac-12 champion Beavers (42-12) the top seed over SEC regular-season winner Florida (40-21).

The other six national seeds, in order, are: Virginia, Indiana, Florida State, Louisiana-Lafayette, TCU and LSU.

The tournament opens Friday with 16 four-team, double-elimination regionals. Best-of-three super regionals will be held next week, with those winners moving to the College World Series in Omaha.

The Southeastern Conference has 10 teams in the tournament, the most ever by a conference. The Atlantic Coast Conference is represented by seven schools, the Big 12 and Pac-12 by five apiece and the Big West by four.

Kennesaw State of the Atlantic Sun Conference and Sacramento State of the Western Athletic Conference are in the tournament for the first time.

Thirty-two of the 64 teams were in the field last year.

Miami is in the field for the 42nd straight year, extending its own record. Florida State is in for the 37th season in a row, second all-time.

Three teams with losing records are in the tournament after winning conference tournament titles. They are Youngstown State (16-36), Siena (25-31) and Bethune-Cookman (26-31).

UCLA (25-30-1) will not get a chance to defend its national title. The Bruins were left out of the tournament for the first time since 2009 after finishing ninth in the Pac-12 in an injury-plagued season.

Oregon State starts the tournament Friday in Corvallis, Oregon, against Summit League champion North Dakota State. UC Irvine and UNLV also are in the Corvallis regional.

Big West Commissioner Dennis Farrell, the committee chairman, said the last four teams selected, in no particular order, were Clemson, North Carolina, Texas A&M and UC Irvine. The first four left out, he said, were Mercer, Central Florida, USC and West Virginia.

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